No, that is expected. A politician is going to have an agenda, so expecting them to not try to withhold information, or to spin it into something favorable is what is absurd. Hell, it is the very nature of politicians in general and has been known and expected for centuries that they will spin things. Hell, every president has been called out for it, be it clinton's "I did not have sexual relations" to Bush's "They have weapons of mass destruction", politicians WILL try to deceive or outright lie.

Meanwhile a news media is not suppose to be a propaganda arm of a political party, but instead should be accurate, relevant, and as impartial as they can be. Their trustworthiness is what they depend on as a news agency and it is the very point of why they are considered the fourth estate. When it is in any way comparable between the two with regard to trustworthiness, the news media has failed beyond measure

This is utter nonsense. Clinton was almost impeached for that lie, and it's far less severe than many of Trump's lies. Bush's lie led to a catastrophic loss of credibility in the public eye.

The government is expected to spin. For that matter, so are media outlets: we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected. The government is not expected to outright fabricate.

This is mere apologism, attempting to normalise the intentional deception of the public.

Should be, I agree.Reality and all of human history, however, has shown that only a fool would believe that. The media, on the other hand, is completely reliant upon their reputation in order to thrive. Reporting fake news or openly lying costs them the only thing they have to sell, their trustworthiness that the news they report is accurate and relevant.

As such, a lying politician is the norm and a lying news media is worthless. If there is a competition between the two, the news media lost just by being terrible enough to compete, regardless if they are better than what is considered as unethical and untrustworthy as a lawyer in popular opinion and general history itself.

Trump is not "the norm" of a lying politician. His lies are more frequent, more severe, and more grounded in prejudice than is "the norm".

This is an attempt to normalise highly abnormal behaviour for a politician. It is utter false equivalence. This is not fudging statistics; this is lying about entire demographics of people, accusing huge swathes of people of crimes without a shred of evidence. Many orders of magnitude more extreme and prejudicial.

No, they are dis-believing one source that has demonstrate supreme unreliability and untrustworthiness, and entertain the alternative, which is a politician that should never be trusted in the first place.

That isn't "partisanship", that is consequence of the news media being reliant upon one's integrity and trustworthiness and failing to uphold that to such a cataclysmic degree.

Your argument would be like saying the villagers no longer believing the boy who cried would are "partisan" when they would be more likely to listen to the person calling the boy a liar.

Every time Trump calls the media fake news and is right, he gains a relative trustworthiness to the media's loss of it. He was right, the media was wrong. The problem with this is that while as a politician, people listening to him trusting him to be honest is not critical after he is elected, the media NEEDS to maintain public trust in their ability to deliver accurate and relevant information. That is their sole purpose, and much like a burger-flipper who can't make a burger without stuffing it down their pants, if they can't do it right, they have no purpose.

It's entirely partisanship. There is no other descriptor for applying high scepticism to one side of the political spectrum, and none at all to the other.

runic knight:No, that is expected. A politician is going to have an agenda, so expecting them to not try to withhold information, or to spin it into something favorable is what is absurd. Hell, it is the very nature of politicians in general and has been known and expected for centuries that they will spin things. Hell, every president has been called out for it, be it clinton's "I did not have sexual relations" to Bush's "They have weapons of mass destruction", politicians WILL try to deceive or outright lie.

Right. No. A politician is going to have an agenda, but the entire system of representative democracy is founded on the idea that the politician's agenda is the agenda of the people who voted for him. He represents their wishes.

If a politician cannot be trusted, the entire system collapses. There is nothing stopping a person from saying "I will do X when in office," getting elected, and then doing Y instead. Trustworthiness is the entire reason people are willing to vote for a candidate based on what he says he's going to do once he's in office. If you cannot trust a politician, you cannot vote for him.

Even those two examples you cited defeat your point. Clinton was impeached and Bush's reputation and legacy were permanently stained. When the president tells a lie, it is supposed to be a big deal. Remember "no new taxes?" Bush Snr. lost re-election because of that.

runic knight:A few problems with this though. First, the failures to report honestly back during the watergate was both treated as a large fuck-up on their part, and wasn't intentionally done for the sake of a political hatchet job.

I fail to see the difference. When reporters fucked up a story back then, there was a huge hubbub and someone got fired. When reporters fuck up a story these days, there's a huge hubbub and someone gets fired.

You seem to be arbitrarily deciding that the fuckups of the 1970s were honest mistakes, whereas the fuckups of the 2010s are political hatchet jobs. You're not citing any actual evidence that supports that assessment. This says a lot more about you than it does about the media.

runic knight:Secondly, regarding Trump, as I said before, the fact there is any competition at all in trustworthiness between a politician and the news media itself is a testament of failure on behalf of the news organization to an embarrassing extent.

Honestly? There isn't a competition. Not outside of your own mind. The New York Times is far less likely to lie to me than Donald Trump is.

Donald Trump wants people like you to believe that he and the mainstream media are exactly as trustworthy, because he knows that's a net gain for himself in trustworthiness. In reality, the mainstream media publishes dozens of stories a day that are completely accurate and one story every couple weeks that is embarrassingly wrong. Donald Trump, meanwhile, tells five lies a day on average.

runic knight:You might be right about Trump being very dishonest (considering how much crap he talks, probably are, though considering you take statements like "acid washed emails" as a lie instead of the clear meaning of her destroying them (which is true)

One, I am right when I say that Trump is dishonest. Dishonesty is his most noteworthy trait. He's like a dishonesty elemental from the lie dimension.

If Trump meant "acid wash" as an unusually specific euphemism for "deleted," then it was a redundant one, because he'd already said they were deleted. Why say "acid wash" in that scenario? Was it a metaphor? Was Trump experimenting with poetic license?

Like I said, I can't even categorise that as a lie, because I don't know what it means. It's nonsense. It's the kind of nonsense that comes from the mouth of a guy who knows that he can keep saying nonsense without repercussions because people like you do not expect him to say anything sensible or true.

runic knight: Still, again, you compare a politician, someone in a career built around spin and presentation, and which is regularly accepted to be on-par in honesty as a lawyer, to the news media itself, which is built or destroyed by public trust in them being accurate and honest.

This may surprise you, but lawyers are also expected to not lie. That sort of thing is frowned upon in a courtroom.

Because those journalists got fired.Donald Trump is still the President.

No, it isn't, regardless how much you wish to try to contort reasoning here.

Yes. It is. Donald Trump will personally, with his own mouth that God gave him, tell outrageous whoppers with disconcerting regularity. He has never been punished for that. When a reporter at CNN tells an outrageous whopper, they face immediate consequences up to and including being immediately fucking fired.

None of this "oh, but CNN is still around, so they're not really punished" bullshit. Donald Trump is not the federal government; he is the chief executive of the federal government. If the chief executive of CNN told the kind of lies Trump did, they would get fired, and CNN would continue to exist and presumably hire a new chief executive. But when Trump tells a lie, he does not get fired. He retains control of the federal government and escapes consequence entirely, because for some reason people like you are holding employees of CNN to a higher standard than employees of the federal government, to the point where lowly reporters are being fired for lies that the President of the United States tells with impunity.

It's bewildering as to why you tolerate this state of affairs, or why you insist on blaming the media as a single aggregate entity for Trump's dishonesty instead of blaming Trump for the lie-sounds his mouth-hole makes. There is no level of impunity enjoyed by anyone in the news media comparable to that enjoyed by Trump. Except for Rupert fucking Murdoch, who is the worst thing to be exported from Australia since planking.

Anyway. I fully expect to open my laptop in the next day or so to find a 25,000-word rebuttal left by you, at which point I will close my laptop and go play with my cat.

If Trump meant "acid wash" as an unusually specific euphemism for "deleted," then it was a redundant one, because he'd already said they were deleted. Why say "acid wash" in that scenario? Was it a metaphor? Was Trump experimenting with poetic license?

Like I said, I can't even categorise that as a lie, because I don't know what it means. It's nonsense. It's the kind of nonsense that comes from the mouth of a guy who knows that he can keep saying nonsense without repercussions because people like you do not expect him to say anything sensible or true.

It means Ms. Clinton had her emails "shredded" with BleachBit brand open source software to make them unrecoverable by forensic means. See https://www.bleachbit.org for your Hillary-endorsed cover-up needs.

If Trump meant "acid wash" as an unusually specific euphemism for "deleted," then it was a redundant one, because he'd already said they were deleted. Why say "acid wash" in that scenario? Was it a metaphor? Was Trump experimenting with poetic license?

Like I said, I can't even categorise that as a lie, because I don't know what it means. It's nonsense. It's the kind of nonsense that comes from the mouth of a guy who knows that he can keep saying nonsense without repercussions because people like you do not expect him to say anything sensible or true.

It means Ms. Clinton had her emails "shredded" with BleachBit brand open source software to make them unrecoverable by forensic means. See https://www.bleachbit.org for your Hillary-endorsed cover-up needs.

1. The fact that she used Bleachbit doesn't make "acid [washing]" emails any less nonsensical. You're raising a non-sequitor to deflect from the point that Trump spouted utter bullshit, and his zealous followers simply kept nodding along shouting "lock her up."

2. Maybe, just maybe Clinton "acid washed" her personal emails (the vast majority of emails were turned over) because she knows what the delusion and rabid right-wing nuts would do with them? I mean they already turned a bunch of (largely) benign emails into a murderous, pedophilic prostitution ring run out of a pizza parlor to the point where one of the alt-right "listen and believers" went to shoot it up. Hell, members of this forum have advanced that conspiracy theory, and it only takes a quick glance at r/the_donald to see it being taken as truth. The right-wing has been inventing conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory about her for 2 decades now; why give them access to more personal info to take that shit even further?

StatusNil:It means Ms. Clinton had her emails "shredded" with BleachBit brand open source software to make them unrecoverable by forensic means. See https://www.bleachbit.org for your Hillary-endorsed cover-up needs.

The only innocent explanation I can fathom is that Donald Trump heard someone say "BleachBit" and misinterpreted it as "bleached it." And then refused to either check the facts or listen when someone checked the facts for him and told him "no, she did not literally bleach her computer."

Like, seriously. Either he's lying to make Clinton's actions look more incriminating than they were, or he's just an idiot and thought she literally emptied a bottle of bleach onto her email server.

Edit: And shit, if he did just mistakenly believe that she had bleached her hard drive, why didn't he say "bleached her hard drive" instead of "acid washed 33,000 emails?" Why specifically her emails, and that specific number of them? That makes it sound like the emails were 33,000 physical things that Hillary Clinton dunked in acid one after another.

It's retarded. No-one who knows how to speak English would phrase it that way.

This is utter nonsense. Clinton was almost impeached for that lie, and it's far less severe than many of Trump's lies. Bush's lie led to a catastrophic loss of credibility in the public eye.

So you agree, presidents have a history of lying? Good, my point stands then, as that was the extent of it there, that politicians lie.

Whatever manufactured position beyond that which you are internally applying to me via strawmen about my pointing that fact out is irrelevant.

Politicians lie and and known to lie. We agree, that was all my point used for support, so moving on.

The government is expected to spin. For that matter, so are media outlets: we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected. The government is not expected to outright fabricate.

This is mere apologism, attempting to normalise the intentional deception of the public.

This is where you are wrong. When someone listens to a politician, they strongly suspect they will lie. When those people go to the news, however, it is only recently that people suspect they are lying through their teeth as bad as politicians. Most people trusted the news media more than politicians. Now fewer do because they keep lying.

You have it in your head that such a statement is a defense of or excuse for or underplays the actions of one or overplays the action of another and all of that is you making shit up and pinning it on me. Stop being so dishonest, I called you out for that last time and will do so every time.

That is not a judgement of their lying as good or bad, or better or worse than politicians. This is saying their lying has negatively affected public perception of their trustworthiness, and in comparison, aided Trump's.

Also, this line of thought is simply amazing.

"we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected."

But

"The government is not expected to outright fabricate."

So, news agencies that are suppose to be impartial, accurate and relevant by a strong built-upon ethical guideline and decades of respect of it, they are ok to ignore that for political parties. They are expected to lie through their teeth to promote a political party?

But the government itself, which is filled with politicians historically revealed to be liars and who are tied far more closely to political parties, that is not expected? Then why is the media which is suppose to be less tied to those parties than the people running the government?

Government is run by political parties, where the media is suppose to be separate from that. That was the whole value and point of the forth estate.

Furthermore, this is not trying to "apologize" for the behavior, this is describing the reality of it. Now, attempting to say that news media is expected to be propaganda for a political party, THAT sounds like apologetic for how they behave towards trump, likely because you don't want to call out the behavior of those opposed to the same political opponent you have. But that does seem to be the underlying conflict here; I am pointing out a simple observed phenomenon of reality, and you are screaming about it because it doesn't target your opposing political party right this second (even though I did touch on them too).

Trump is not "the norm" of a lying politician. His lies are more frequent, more severe, and more grounded in prejudice than is "the norm".

Does he now? Well, usually I would accept this claim as common sense, but since you seem pretty determined to reject that at every instance, I am going to have to ask you for something to back that claim up. Oh, and has to be a trustworthy source, so any one already found guilty of manufacturing stories or outright lying about him, not trusted to be honest.

And I know, that means you will have NOTHING you can use to back up your claim since that sort of thing is not measured well to begin with, and only those with a blatant agenda, for or against him, would bother to look it up much. But that itself is the point of the exercise, to show the result of what happens when the media's trustworthiness is compromised because people like yourself actually play apologetics for it just because it currently tells you what you want to hear.

This is an attempt to normalise highly abnormal behaviour for a politician. It is utter false equivalence. This is not fudging statistics; this is lying about entire demographics of people, accusing huge swathes of people of crimes without a shred of evidence. Many orders of magnitude more extreme and prejudicial.

Again with this? No, it is not "normalizing" anything, it is pointing at reality itself and saying "this is reality". You would say a claim that "the grass is green" is "normalizing" grass-colour based prejudice with this abused logic of yours.

I am pointing at a known public perception about politicians (that they are distrustful), built upon history itself giving countless examples, built upon the reputation of it being common accepted knowledge, and built upon even your own claims regarding a political party.

You are getting upset because I am not selectively picking only the side you dislike. I am sorry, but I don't hold the illusion you do that pointing out reality itself in common knowledge and public perception is "normalizing" behavior, it is just defining reality itself. That grass is green. Politicians are notoriously known as distrustful, opportunistic, liars. The media, up til recently, was not, but their fuck-ups is quickly changing them to that.

Your opposition to that simple stance is silly, but your mental gymnastics and sloganism accusations like "normalizing" are simply meaningless.

It's entirely partisanship. There is no other descriptor for applying high scepticism to one side of the political spectrum, and none at all to the other.

Except I am skeptical of the other side as well, and openly called them out in my examples already. You being upset I am talking about the media critical of trump does not mean I am not critical of the failings of the media positive about him, and my examples prove that point already.

Furthermore, examine your claim here. You are calling me partisan because I am skeptical of your side while skeptical of your opposing side. You don't care that I am skeptical of both (and I have established that point already, clearly), you only care I am not more skeptical of your opponent than your side. THAT is pure partisan bias.

You are being very dishonest here claiming I am not skeptical of you opposing side. You should withdraw your accusation when it is so blatantly wrong. Or should I instead take your defense of the media's behavior to openly lie, as well as the majority of your claims themselves, to be protecting your own vested interest in using the same tactic?

If you are going to make claims about me, at least have the decency to not be blatantly dishonest in them. I never said this was exclusive to those who opposed trump, and I actively have referred to examples of it not such as my description of fox news, and my implication that sites like Breitbart would be expected of that behavior

Stop right there. You directed numerous (baseless) personal accusations towards me in the tract above. If you're then going to play the victim, this conversation cannot continue.

You know, just because you cut out where I clarify exactly how you are wrong doesn't mean other people can't till read it in my posts and see you are being dishonest in trying to hide it. Hell, I readded it here in bold and will probably do so in the future when I see this sort of behavior.

You are getting called out for your already demonstrated false claims and your lack of anything worthwhile to support them but your own imagination. The fact you want an out of the conversation that doesn't look like there is a tail between your legs is noted, but irrelevant to me. The moral high ground of "Why I never!" is an attractive option, I suppose, especially after making claims of my position itself based on nothing but your own personal biases. I have no patience for that though, so I will just call it out fine. Seems a fair rebuttal to baseless claims of "you are defending him" when I am pointing out simple reality such as "when the media is caught lying, it makes them look untrustworthy".

Either receive criticism without screaming bloody murder, or do not throw personal slights yourself. Choose one.

"There is no other descriptor for applying high scepticism to one side of the political spectrum, and none at all to the other."

Yeah, I don't care if you think calling out your blatant argument tactics and making assumptions about them is "personal slights". If your reply relies to heavily on tone policing instead of actually making a point, it is a sure sign you don't have anything to support yours. And you cut away a lot of my point just for the sake of this pearl-clutching about me calling out your claims.

Your "criticism" thus far has been reliant upon a "with me or against me" mindset that I don't share. I am going to call that out, and I am going to call you out for using it, relying upon it, or trying to perpetuate it. And when you try to quietly sweep it under the rug to complain about tone instead after making such supported claims, I will call that out to.

My statement was that the media lying about Trump has cost them trustworthiness and made more and more people believe him more than the media. Address that as it is, and leave the "stop excusing him" nonsense at the door if you want me to make fewer "personal slights" in calling out your openly dishonest misrepresentation of my position, my arguments, or my views.

You know, I smile every time I see someone complain about length in these forums. The greatest benefit of them is this sort of long-form dissection and examination of topics and points, so I can't help by feel warm inside when people complain I am using that as it was intended.

Still, for novelty, I'll try to be consise since I either covered my points already or we are largely talking past each other anyways. Or not, there is plenty here to chew on so we will see.

Right. No. A politician is going to have an agenda, but the entire system of representative democracy is founded on the idea that the politician's agenda is the agenda of the people who voted for him. He represents their wishes.

If a politician cannot be trusted, the entire system collapses. There is nothing stopping a person from saying "I will do X when in office," getting elected, and then doing Y instead. Trustworthiness is the entire reason people are willing to vote for a candidate based on what he says he's going to do once he's in office. If you cannot trust a politician, you cannot vote for him.

Even those two examples you cited defeat your point. Clinton was impeached and Bush's reputation and legacy were permanently stained. When the president tells a lie, it is supposed to be a big deal. Remember "no new taxes?" Bush Snr. lost re-election because of that.

I never said it was a good thing. I said it with regard to public perception and general opinion, as all of my statements on this has been. My point there was that politicians are known to be liars, and Clinton and Bush examples show that is common of presidents too. Any opinions about it being a good thing were not being made by me, merely it IS a thing in the first place.

I fail to see the difference. When reporters fucked up a story back then, there was a huge hubbub and someone got fired. When reporters fuck up a story these days, there's a huge hubbub and someone gets fired.

You seem to be arbitrarily deciding that the fuckups of the 1970s were honest mistakes, whereas the fuckups of the 2010s are political hatchet jobs. You're not citing any actual evidence that supports that assessment. This says a lot more about you than it does about the media.

It says I am talking in a forum and not as a professional journalist. Which, much like comparing them to politicians, if a professional journalist is seriously being compared to an anonymous poster, their reputation is already fucked regardless if they "win" the comparison against me or not. They should be a lot better than me. If that is ever a question, things have gotten bad.

As for people getting fired, frequency of fuck-ups compared to consequences, and political and financial ties between media and political parties today compared to the 1970's. I'll wait for your evidence of the amount of fuck-ups regarding the watergate reporting then go from there. Things like the JournoList show political allegiance in media and motivation there-in as well.

But this, all of this, is rather irrelevant to the point I made in the first place. The media has been caught lying about the president with such frequency and severity that it is harming their reputation as trustworthy among people who don't have a Pavlovian response to them already, good or ill. They vindicate Trump's claims of fake news by being fake news, which harms their trustworthiness and helps his. When a man goes "he is a liar" to someone who is found to be making false claims, it makes them seem more trustworthy in comparison, unless there is an inherent bias against him previously.

Honestly? There isn't a competition. Not outside of your own mind. The New York Times is far less likely to lie to me than Donald Trump is.

And to others, they are more likely. That's part of the point, that it is even getting to the degree that it is a question for anyone not already hardline in a camp. That is bad.

Donald Trump wants people like you to believe that he and the mainstream media are exactly as trustworthy, because he knows that's a net gain for himself in trustworthiness. In reality, the mainstream media publishes dozens of stories a day that are completely accurate and one story every couple weeks that is embarrassingly wrong. Donald Trump, meanwhile, tells five lies a day on average.

You show the problem there entirely and make my point very clearly, while poorly trying to mock it. All those stories now have people doubting them because they fucked up other stories. Their trustworthiness is lessened when they get caught lying about trump or things related to him.

This undermines them to anyone who doesn't have a bias that is being feed, such as yourself.

You try to make it an irrational response to dismiss a known liar on a subject they are known to lie about, but to anyone who doesn't have a built-in bias to knee-jerk accept or reject things that fit their biases, they have to rely on history of trustworthiness to decide. The news media used to be rather reliable aside from radicals on either side and Fox news as a major news network. But they keep fucking up, making shit up, pushing bullshit just to try to stick-it to trump or republicans or whatever. You have places like CNN that are busted faking stupid shit like fish food dumping just to score a political point, in doing so they kill their trustworthiness off to those who actually care about that instead of preconceived biases to determine accuracy of reporting. Hell, it is how people start to trust trump more than the media in the first place as the media's own actions vindicate his claims about them and cast doubt on their claims toward him.

The result is like a witness in a trial destroying their own reputation by lying under oath. Sure, if you want to believe they saw the accused at the time of the shooting, you are going to believe in spite of how questionable they are, but other people are not going to take his word when he keeps being caught lying. And the consequence of that is while you may laugh it off as "pfft, fools believing fake news rhetoric", others can't put their faith in the media to not lie to them and the accused might get off even if actually did the crime.

Downplaying or ignoring that effect because YOU already believe what they say regardless is arrogance. It is remarkably similar to the attitude that cost Hillary the election.

There is a reason I have framed this as general opinion and common perception, and why I have specifically separated that away from those who already at set in stone in either direction. Because it doesn't mater if you will always trust CNN or someone else will always distrust them, you two are the extreme poles and are, regardless how much either might feel others, just loud minorities. Those in the middle, the moderates on either side, the independents, the majority of people who's opinions are reflected in votes and decisions, that is what this affects. And when the media is seen as just as likely to lie as Trump to those people, it becomes a case of competing crying wolf regardless how much YOU personally know to not trust him. Who with any skepticism is going to trust the media when they keep being caught lying? Maybe the other lies reported on by the media was also them lying? Maybe Trump really is the victim of a slander campaign like he claims?

Put hey, if you want to just laugh and dismiss this fall of trustworthiness, go ahead. Enjoy trump 2020 as the media tries the same tricks they did in 2016 against him and it fails even harder. Me? I'd rather see this shit reformed so the dems can put a candidate that isn't grossly unelectable up for a run.

One, I am right when I say that Trump is dishonest. Dishonesty is his most noteworthy trait. He's like a dishonesty elemental from the lie dimension.

Which is why him being trusted more than the media by anyone not a party sycophant should be a slap in the face and seen as a very distressing occurrence, not just something to try to handwave away and pretend only his faithful believe.

Or just keep shouting "he is a liar" I am sure it will convince people eventually as they grow tired of trying to explain "That doesn't excuse the media being liars too"

If Trump meant "acid wash" as an unusually specific euphemism for "deleted," then it was a redundant one, because he'd already said they were deleted. Why say "acid wash" in that scenario? Was it a metaphor? Was Trump experimenting with poetic license?

Like I said, I can't even categorise that as a lie, because I don't know what it means. It's nonsense. It's the kind of nonsense that comes from the mouth of a guy who knows that he can keep saying nonsense without repercussions because people like you do not expect him to say anything sensible or true.

I think Status covered this one, so I'll let him cover that back and forth.

This may surprise you, but lawyers are also expected to not lie. That sort of thing is frowned upon in a courtroom.

Same as politicians. And also same as them, when you ask public perception if they would trust a lawyer or politician to be telling the truth and you would get few who do, especially when it involves people not directly connected (there is a well know phenomenon where people think more highly of their own lawyer or representatives than others). This view of politicians as untrustworthy is well established so when one lies, it is never "I never expected that", it is always "I never trusted them anyways".

The media once had a far higher public regard of trustworthiness. That is deteriorating quickly. That deterioration is a major problem, not just in general, but especially for the liberal side of politics.

Yes. It is. Donald Trump will personally, with his own mouth that God gave him, tell outrageous whoppers with disconcerting regularity. He has never been punished for that. When a reporter at CNN tells an outrageous whopper, they face immediate consequences up to and including being immediately fucking fired.

None of this "oh, but CNN is still around, so they're not really punished" bullshit. Donald Trump is not the federal government; he is the chief executive of the federal government. If the chief executive of CNN told the kind of lies Trump did, they would get fired, and CNN would continue to exist and presumably hire a new chief executive. But when Trump tells a lie, he does not get fired. He retains control of the federal government and escapes consequence entirely, because for some reason people like you are holding employees of CNN to a higher standard than employees of the federal government, to the point where lowly reporters are being fired for lies that the President of the United States tells with impunity.

Has he broke the law or the established means of maintaining his job? Because, as you said at the start, how Bush's lie tainted his legacy, it still didn't get him fired either. There is a different system in place between the two jobs, and different requirements, expectations, and purpose.

Trump was elected, not hired. He has limitations set by the system, not a human resources department or even a PR department (in that PR can't fire him like they could in a news media company for a journalist), and the only people he has to make happy are the constituents who voted for him, which, despite all the lying, seem happy with him thus far. A journalist has a single purpose of delivering accurate, honest and reliable news, and failing that is going to cost them pretty likely. Sure, lately news media has allowed countless stories to be pushed through that are later "fixed" after the damage is done without any consequences (considering the amount of such stories compared to people fired, it seems only monumental fuckups result in actual punishment), but even that leniency for such dishonesty and misrepresentation eventually runs dry as the sole purpose of the job is affected. Trump just has to not break the law, and make the people that voted for him happy enough to re-vote for him if he wants to run again. Liar still seems to be doing that much.

Expecting a journalist who is an employee and representative of a company to embarrass said company to always retain their job after they fucked up, especially when said company has the legal means to remove them, is simply foolish. Comparing that situation to an elected official who has not yet been charged with breaking the law is all the more so.

It's bewildering as to why you tolerate this state of affairs, or why you insist on blaming the media as a single aggregate entity for Trump's dishonesty instead of blaming Trump for the lie-sounds his mouth-hole makes. There is no level of impunity enjoyed by anyone in the news media comparable to that enjoyed by Trump. Except for Rupert fucking Murdoch, who is the worst thing to be exported from Australia since planking.

Public opinion doesn't trust politicians and used to trust media, who was once respected as a watchdog on the government.

Lately, the media' hate-on for Trump has cost them a lot of trust and undermined their very function, both as information providers in general and as the fourth estate of the people.

You are asking why I don't blame Trump for being who he is and instead call out the media for their fuck ups? I call Trump incompetent and a liar just fine. But I call the media that too because they are that too. You take offense at me calling them out, but I just see you playing apologetic for their fuck ups because it is in the name of your political beliefs. The media should not be so easily played and manipulated, yet they run like lemmings to his every clown-show. YOU, yourself, hang on his tweets as examples of how he is worse as if I care at all that he is worse. This should never have been a competition, but the media made it one, and in doing so, they are losing.

Seriously, look at how this conversation has gone. I am critical of the failings of the media in reporting Trump. Your defense is that Trump is worse. Not that the media wasn't dishonest. Just that all I should care about is that Trump is worse.

I don't care if he is or not here, that doesn't make the media less bad because of the comparison, it just highlights you don't care beyond how it relates to hurting your political opposition. You don't care that the media is lying more often, just as long as they target someone you dislike.

I don't blame Trump's dishonest on anyone but him. But it seems like you blame the media's dishonesty on Trump.

Anyway. I fully expect to open my laptop in the next day or so to find a 25,000-word rebuttal left by you, at which point I will close my laptop and go play with my cat.

Good. You should spend more time with your cat than posting online. As for the length of my posts, the more I have to re-explain myself, the longer they get. Considering I have to do that a lot lately, it was probably wishful thinking of me to try to be kind and go for shorter. Oh well.

So you agree, presidents have a history of lying? Good, my point stands then, as that was the extent of it there, that politicians lie.

Whatever manufactured position beyond that which you are internally applying to me via strawmen about my pointing that fact out is irrelevant.

Politicians lie and and known to lie. We agree, that was all my point used for support, so moving on.

Yes, politicians lie, obviously. That was the extent of your point? That was never under contention by anybody here, and proves nothing.

You stated in the previous post that we should "expect [the President] to withhold information", and implied that the news media should be held to a higher standard. Both of those statements, of course, go well beyond the mere point that politicians lie-- but if you're not trying to make any of those related arguments any more, then that's fine with me.

This is where you are wrong. When someone listens to a politician, they strongly suspect they will lie. When those people go to the news, however, it is only recently that people suspect they are lying through their teeth as bad as politicians. Most people trusted the news media more than politicians. Now fewer do because they keep lying.

You have it in your head that such a statement is a defense of or excuse for or underplays the actions of one or overplays the action of another and all of that is you making shit up and pinning it on me. Stop being so dishonest, I called you out for that last time and will do so every time.

That is not a judgement of their lying as good or bad, or better or worse than politicians. This is saying their lying has negatively affected public perception of their trustworthiness, and in comparison, aided Trump's.

The scepticism you're describing, though, is very specifically of anti-Trump media. You made that specification yourself, in fact. We're not talking merely about media scepticism; we're talking quite specifically about scepticism of the claims of those who are against Trump, and none applied to Trump himself (or his own supporters in the media). When Trump slams the media, he only ever applies the criticisms to his political opponents. You did the same.

So, news agencies that are suppose to be impartial, accurate and relevant by a strong built-upon ethical guideline and decades of respect of it, they are ok to ignore that for political parties. They are expected to lie through their teeth to promote a political party?

Uhrm, no, I never said that.

You're accusing me constantly of dishonesty, and simultaneously making up shit about what I'm saying.

Furthermore, this is not trying to "apologize" for the behavior, this is describing the reality of it. Now, attempting to say that news media is expected to be propaganda for a political party, THAT sounds like apologetic for how they behave towards trump, likely because you don't want to call out the behavior of those opposed to the same political opponent you have. But that does seem to be the underlying conflict here; I am pointing out a simple observed phenomenon of reality, and you are screaming about it because it doesn't target your opposing political party right this second (even though I did touch on them too).

You're not "pointing out a simple observed phenomenon". You're directing a criticism solely to one side of the political divide, though both are guilty of it. It's partisanship.

Does he now? Well, usually I would accept this claim as common sense, but since you seem pretty determined to reject that at every instance, I am going to have to ask you for something to back that claim up. Oh, and has to be a trustworthy source, so any one already found guilty of manufacturing stories or outright lying about him, not trusted to be honest.

I've snipped the second paragraph, there, because there wasn't any actual content in it whatsoever.

Take a look at Politifact's file. Note that each statement of Trump's is directly quoted.

Compare it to the files on rival politicians. You'll see that lying is common (including for Clinton)-- but nowhere near as common.

Except I am skeptical of the other side as well, and openly called them out in my examples already. You being upset I am talking about the media critical of trump does not mean I am not critical of the failings of the media positive about him, and my examples prove that point already.

Furthermore, examine your claim here. You are calling me partisan because I am skeptical of your side while skeptical of your opposing side. You don't care that I am skeptical of both (and I have established that point already, clearly), you only care I am not more skeptical of your opponent than your side. THAT is pure partisan bias.

You are being very dishonest here claiming I am not skeptical of you opposing side. You should withdraw your accusation when it is so blatantly wrong. Or should I instead take your defense of the media's behavior to openly lie, as well as the majority of your claims themselves, to be protecting your own vested interest in using the same tactic?

You are not equally sceptical of both. Your first post on this matter-- the one to which, specifically, I first responded-- singled out solely those opposed to Trump as damaging the credibility of the media. This is exactly the same narrative that the establishment trots out, time and again-- ideological opponents are accused constantly of dishonesty, while equally dishonest outlets on the same side as Trump do not.

runic knight:So you agree, presidents have a history of lying? Good, my point stands then, as that was the extent of it there, that politicians lie.

Whatever manufactured position beyond that which you are internally applying to me via strawmen about my pointing that fact out is irrelevant.

Politicians lie and and known to lie. We agree, that was all my point used for support, so moving on.

This is pathetic.

You weren't stating the bare fact that some politicians have been known to lie. You were making an ethical comparison. You were saying that you hold journalists to a higher standard of honesty than you do your President. Anyone with the patience to scroll up the page can see that for themselves.

runic knight:You know, I smile every time I see someone complain about length in these forums. The greatest benefit of them is this sort of long-form dissection and examination of topics and points, so I can't help by feel warm inside when people complain I am using that as it was intended.

An argument is like a knife; it cuts deepest when it's been sharpened to as thin and smooth an edge as possible.

What you are doing is not arguing. The purpose of an argument is to convince someone of your point. You will never convince someone of your point if your arguments are intentionally so long and so dense that they cannot be easily read and understood. And if you cannot convince someone with your argument, you are wasting your time.

It means Ms. Clinton had her emails "shredded" with BleachBit brand open source software to make them unrecoverable by forensic means. See https://www.bleachbit.org for your Hillary-endorsed cover-up needs.

It means Ms. Clinton had her emails "shredded" with BleachBit brand open source software to make them unrecoverable by forensic means. See https://www.bleachbit.org for your Hillary-endorsed cover-up needs.

runic knight:You know, I smile every time I see someone complain about length in these forums. The greatest benefit of them is this sort of long-form dissection and examination of topics and points, so I can't help by feel warm inside when people complain I am using that as it was intended.

If you want to use long-form dissection, try making it coherent, consistent, logical, properly sourced, with individual points made in a clear and concise fashion.

Otherwise it's not much a dissection as pouring soggy porridge over the thread.

Yes, politicians lie, obviously. That was the extent of your point? That was never under contention by anybody here, and proves nothing.

You stated in the previous post that we should "expect [the President] to withhold information", and implied that the news media should be held to a higher standard. Both of those statements, of course, go well beyond the mere point that politicians lie-- but if you're not trying to make any of those related arguments any more, then that's fine with me.

My point was that politicians are expected to lie or withhold or spin or generally be untrustworthy, not in the sense that "it is a good thing" or it is "part of their job", but in the sense that is the public expectation that they are so untrustworthy, that they will.

Meanwhile public perception of the media WAS that they were trustworthy, and between the two, default more believable on a story than the politician because of the far more stringently enforced source expectations and detailed ethical code.

That was the point, that the media used to be near-universally inherently more trusted than politicians. Which was used to support my overall point of "The media lying all the time about Trump hurts their trustworthiness and raise his when he is vindicated about them being liars".

The scepticism you're describing, though, is very specifically of anti-Trump media. You made that specification yourself, in fact. We're not talking merely about media scepticism; we're talking quite specifically about scepticism of the claims of those who are against Trump, and none applied to Trump himself (or his own supporters in the media). When Trump slams the media, he only ever applies the criticisms to his political opponents. You did the same.

That is not scepticism.

No, being skeptical of the media because they are lying is not "not skepticism" just because I am not attacking the target of their lies equally to them just because you personally dislike the target of their lies and want to excuse their behavior. That is you forcing your own political bias, nothing more.

My point was directed at the media's loss of trustworthiness, of course I will look at them as an example instead of wasting my time going "oh and the politician who people don't trust already is untrustworthy too". And I brought up reference to his supporters in the media as well with Fox and Breitbart, so you are outright lying about that at this point.

In fact, the only relevance Trump's trustworthiness relates is in that by calling the media liars and being vindicated, he is gaining more trustworthiness for their loss.

At this point, you keep going "But what about him being a liar!" as if it is in any way relevant to the point that the media has been lying with regularity about him. The media lying is not justified, excused or explained by him being a liar, and the only purpose of comparisons to my own point was in how embarrassing it is to the media that they are being compared to him at all, let alone that they are losing that competition in the eyes of many who, unlike yourself, aren't predisposed to hate or support one side of the political isle or the other. Your constant complaining about him though, and your outright denial of the fact I HAVE mentioned his supporters in the media, shows you are upset solely because I am not satisfying your personal bias here.

Also, this line of thought is simply amazing."we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected."But"The government is not expected to outright fabricate."So, news agencies that are suppose to be impartial, accurate and relevant by a strong built-upon ethical guideline and decades of respect of it, they are ok to ignore that for political parties. They are expected to lie through their teeth to promote a political party?

Uhrm, no, I never said that.

You're accusing me constantly of dishonesty, and simultaneously making up shit about what I'm saying.

No, unlike yourself who I outright prove when you are being dishonest by making claims that are dishonest (such as by reminding you that despite how much you claim otherwise, I HAVE touched upon Trump's supporters lack of honesty too), I am simply applying your words here and trying to make sense of them.Those were your words, quoted exactly. And that is the consequence of your words. You defend and excuse the media's actions because the media displaying party bias is fully expected, referring to the outright lying, you know outright fabrication of the news and the truth, that I have been calling out as displaying party bias. And right after you condemn the government itself for outright fabricating despite the fact that between the two, the government should be FAR more influenced by the political biases you excuse in the media.

So which is it? Is it ok for the media to lie and manufacture the news because of the political ties, and thus even more likely and justifiable that the government to do so because they are literally run by those ties? Or is the government no expected to do that, and thus there is even less justification for the media to manufacture stories and news?

If I got something wrong, feel free to explain it, but as you presented and wrote it, THAT was the take away.

You're not "pointing out a simple observed phenomenon". You're directing a criticism solely to one side of the political divide, though both are guilty of it. It's partisanship.

No, I am pointing it out and responding to your complaints about the half you support as you ignore that I touched upon supporters of trump like Breitbart and Fox in not-favorable ways too. My criticism seeming more directed at those who lie about Trump negatively might also stem largely from the thread itself being an outright example of the media lying or misrepresenting negatively about Trump.

Furthermore, you keep making this claim (that is disproven already since I did touch on Reupblican supporting media) which still doesn't address the media lying being bad. Your concern is not that they lie, but that I am not whining about Trump equally. I don't care if you want me to complain about Trump equally, my point was on the media's failing and loss of trustworthiness, so it doesn't require I do so just to satisfy your bias.

I've snipped the second paragraph, there, because there wasn't any actual content in it whatsoever.

Take a look at Politifact's file. Note that each statement of Trump's is directly quoted.

Compare it to the files on rival politicians. You'll see that lying is common (including for Clinton)-- but nowhere near as common.

So, you cut out the part where I explained that I didn't really want you to make your case because it was going to be rejected for bias, and was going to do so because doing so was itself an example of the problem when the media lies, and instead you tried to fulfill the request that was called for solely as a point of demonstration, with a site example that googling "politifact bias" brought up problem with bias about, thereby demonstrating my very point both about the problem with using examples with biases, and your own personal bias blinding you...

I can't tell if you just fail to understand the point I am making, or are being intentionally obtuse about it at this point.

You are obsessed with showing Trump is a liar despite it neither being challenged or being relevant.

I'll try again, and go slower. Which means going longer. And you folks wonder why I write such long posts when I have to keep doing this sort of thing. Ah well, I know you all love to see these text walls...

Ok, from the top.

The site you called up has people claiming it has a bias. And honestly, there is a case to be made there, selective bias of "facts", representation of quotes, sheer number of quotes selected, and even harsher judgements for the same statements as made by others are all causes of concern about it. But no, that was not the point and I am not getting into that one here. The relevance of the request for an example, though, is that people call that bias out, are vindicated when they find an example showing that, and the site loses trustworthiness while the ones that called it out gain.

This is a problem. Because of the bias exists and is observably obvious, the trustworthiness of the media, or even fact-checking sites like politifact, is harmed. The more examples, the larger the harm in public perception of them. And those that call them out only need to parade the examples of their failure out to be validated and claim trustworthiness for calling them out.

This is a large reason why due diligence was such an important part of journalism. As I said before, the public is not surprised when a politician lies. It is an expectation that they will. Their job doesn't depend on them being seen as honest so much as being seen as effective to those who support them. Most voters wouldn't care if they found out a politician lied to someone else, so long as it wasn't them and wasn't illegal. A journalist and a news media publication, however, only has their trustworthiness. Without it, they are worthless. Them lying in reporting, even harmlessly, hurts their sole purpose. So CNN lying about Trump, or politifact demonstrating a bias hurt them far more than a politician for the same action. It happens enough, and then those calling them up look more trustworthy in comparison for being accurate in calling them out.

The result is that your example would be rejected for failing to be unbiased. And my request was designed as such, to highlight the consequence of the media being publicly distrusted: People stop taking it as reliable evidence of claims"

Yeah, it is fun to reply in kind. Fortunately I take the time to back my stuff up too though, so address that if you would, not my tone itself because I largely do not care if you find my tearing apart your replies to be "hostile" at this point. I am addressing points, explaining mine, and demonstrating how I am reaching the conclusions I am, even when it comes to pointing out your own biases and dishonest portrayals of my position. Of course, if you want me to be more "friendly", perhaps stop making bald-faced lies about my position instead and I wouldn't have the examples of your blatant dishonesty and politically motivated bias to call out in the first place. Would probably result in a lot shorter posts too since I wouldn't feel the need to address them.

You are not equally sceptical of both. Your first post on this matter-- the one to which, specifically, I first responded-- singled out solely those opposed to Trump as damaging the credibility of the media. This is exactly the same narrative that the establishment trots out, time and again-- ideological opponents are accused constantly of dishonesty, while equally dishonest outlets on the same side as Trump do not.

You mean in a thread that itself is an example of the media being dishonest in presentation of facts against trump, in response to a post that specifically talks about a pattern of dishonesty, I would touch upon the media's irrational increase in dishonesty when it comes to Trump compared to anyone else, and the way that Trump's reply of "Fake News" shows the consequence of such dishonesty, doing that a little more frequently than examples of Fox or Breitbart that are less relevant to this thread's topic? Gee, I can't imagine why I would do that, especially as more and more replies complain more about how dishonest trump is than address the media's behavior which was my larger point.

From that first post itself.

"News media and opponents of trump have certainly sold a lot of goodwill and trust down the river with the amount of stories and claims misrepresentative if not openly fabricated, same as republicans have when it came to obama.

Even then, even with no reason to be impartial as my post is directly replying to someone later claiming republican are "never right", I STILL touch upon both sides when critical of the media.

You keep manufacturing baseless claims like you do and wonder why I am so intolerant of them to the point you would describe me as "hostile"?

runic knight:So you agree, presidents have a history of lying? Good, my point stands then, as that was the extent of it there, that politicians lie.

Whatever manufactured position beyond that which you are internally applying to me via strawmen about my pointing that fact out is irrelevant.

Politicians lie and and known to lie. We agree, that was all my point used for support, so moving on.

This is pathetic.

Tell me about it, what should be a simple statement of stance has devolved this much because people read into being critical of the media, with particular example of their lying about Trump, is some defense of him or excuse of his actions. It is just sad people can't see an actual criticism of what they think of as an ally without immediately charging to the attack of their political foe, even if said foes aren't actually there.

Seriously, my stance was "Media lying makes people trust them less, and people calling the media liars are trusted more". Hardly revolutionary, yet here I am arguing with, what, 3? 4? People now about how trump is a liar (as if I said he wasn't), and how the length of my posts are too long.

My point about the media lying more frequently making more people less likely to trust them seems to be ignored entirely. Almost intentionality even...

You weren't stating the bare fact that some politicians have been known to lie. You were making an ethical comparison. You were saying that you hold journalists to a higher standard of honesty than you do your President. Anyone with the patience to scroll up the page can see that for themselves.

No, I am calling up public perception of the ethical expectations of both with relation to the surprise if caught lying and using the fact that people used to be more surprised by the journalist lying than the politician, but now that difference is changing as journalists are less and less trustworthy.

This is not holding them to a higher standard personally, this is arguing public perception and expectation of them to be honest is higher than a politician, which is relevant when my entire point is about how the media's behavior is harming their public perception and people like Trump, who call that out, are gaining trustworthiness by being vindicated for doing so.

runic knight:You know, I smile every time I see someone complain about length in these forums. The greatest benefit of them is this sort of long-form dissection and examination of topics and points, so I can't help by feel warm inside when people complain I am using that as it was intended.

An argument is like a knife; it cuts deepest when it's been sharpened to as thin and smooth an edge as possible.

What you are doing is not arguing. The purpose of an argument is to convince someone of your point. You will never convince someone of your point if your arguments are intentionally so long and so dense that they cannot be easily read and understood. And if you cannot convince someone with your argument, you are wasting your time.

You mistake yourself for the world. I likely wont convince you because you already demonstrated there is no reasoning you out of your position. But other people read these replies and take things away. I will, of course, try my best to explain my reasoning and my arguments, break down points, support positions, call out flaws, and generally treat you like someone who can be reasoned with. I give that benefit of the doubt to anyone I talk with, even if frustrated from time to time. But even suspecting you will never be convinced wont stop me from arguing. At worst, I still examine my own arguments, sort my reasoning, and hone my position. At best, I may yet surprise myself and convince someone I didn't expect.

As I have addressed to the many who come at me with "Why do you even post" style of criticism of me, I like to have discussion and argument. I like to break things down, examine them, and see how they relate to one another. Back when the sock-puppet used to complain about me replying to them knowing full well what a griefer he was, I said as much. It still stands.

On the point of length specifically though, that is entirely a consequence of environment. Every time I have to drill deeper into an argument, tie up a loose point, address a fallacy, or jut re-explain my point that has been misunderstood or just misrepresented, it adds length.

There is a saying I like "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Most people see that and just see the first part, that of "simple as possible", but I like it for the second part more. Don't dumb it down more than it needs to in order to be functional.

My posts are a result of that mindset. They are as simple as I think they are needed. If I need to explain something because it is an odd train of thought, that is needed. If I need to address a position that is flawed, that is needed too. If I need to correct a fallacy, that is needed. If I need to re-explain myself in a way even harder to misrepresent, also needed. Every addition to length is the result of a post or reply that showed me I must not have had enough explaining my point when they can still misunderstand my point, or still repeat a debunked point, or still use a fallacy, or still bring up an irrelevant bit of fluff. The fact they are so long tells you the amount I feel I need to put forth to functionally communicate my thoughts to the person I am talking to. I suppose, that really is not flattering to you though.

Agema:If you want to use long-form dissection, try making it coherent, consistent, logical, properly sourced, with individual points made in a clear and concise fashion.

Otherwise it's not much a dissection as pouring soggy porridge over the thread.

You mean such by breaking up posts to address individual points, correct mistakes, explain and re-explain arguments, section off fallacies, and re-state positions that get misrepresented with nearly every post?

My point was that politicians are expected to lie or withhold or spin or generally be untrustworthy, not in the sense that "it is a good thing" or it is "part of their job", but in the sense that is the public expectation that they are so untrustworthy, that they will.

Meanwhile public perception of the media WAS that they were trustworthy, and between the two, default more believable on a story than the politician because of the far more stringently enforced source expectations and detailed ethical code.

That was the point, that the media used to be near-universally inherently more trusted than politicians. Which was used to support my overall point of "The media lying all the time about Trump hurts their trustworthiness and raise his when he is vindicated about them being liars".

If that was the expectation, the expectation was baseless and foolish. It should be clear, also, that the misrepresentations bandied about Trump-- the fish-food thing, nonsense like that-- have by-and-large been unimportant in comparison with the President's own untrustworthiness on far bigger issues.

Keep in mind, more than half the time Trump whines about "fake news", he's using it to try to dismiss something perfectly true. It's a distraction for him; a method of burying criticism, including valid and true criticism. He has led his supporters into disbelieving the truth.

No, being skeptical of the media because they are lying is not "not skepticism" just because I am not attacking the target of their lies equally to them just because you personally dislike the target of their lies and want to excuse their behavior. That is you forcing your own political bias, nothing more.

What I "personally dislike" is applying an entirely different standard to outlets that don't fit the ideological agenda. That is what Trump does, and that is what you were doing when you singled out only "opponents to Trump". You are the one using political agenda to distinguish between whether an outlet is trustworthy, not me.

My point was directed at the media's loss of trustworthiness, of course I will look at them as an example instead of wasting my time going "oh and the politician who people don't trust already is untrustworthy too". And I brought up reference to his supporters in the media as well with Fox and Breitbart, so you are outright lying about that at this point.

You made a throwaway reference, amidst numerous essay-length posts which constantly decried Trump's political opponents.

No, unlike yourself who I outright prove when you are being dishonest by making claims that are dishonest (such as by reminding you that despite how much you claim otherwise, I HAVE touched upon Trump's supporters lack of honesty too), I am simply applying your words here and trying to make sense of them.Those were your words, quoted exactly. And that is the consequence of your words. You defend and excuse the media's actions because the media displaying party bias is fully expected, referring to the outright lying, you know outright fabrication of the news and the truth, that I have been calling out as displaying party bias. And right after you condemn the government itself for outright fabricating despite the fact that between the two, the government should be FAR more influenced by the political biases you excuse in the media.

So which is it? Is it ok for the media to lie and manufacture the news because of the political ties, and thus even more likely and justifiable that the government to do so because they are literally run by those ties? Or is the government no expected to do that, and thus there is even less justification for the media to manufacture stories and news?

If I got something wrong, feel free to explain it, but as you presented and wrote it, THAT was the take away.

My words? They were not my bloody words. Where did I say it was fine and dandy for the media to lie and fabricate? That's a spurious accusation, something you pulled out of your ass-- and then you have the gall to insist that I'm being "dishonest" when I point that out.

Agema:If you want to use long-form dissection, try making it coherent, consistent, logical, properly sourced, with individual points made in a clear and concise fashion.

Otherwise it's not much a dissection as pouring soggy porridge over the thread.

You mean such by breaking up posts to address individual points, correct mistakes, explain and re-explain arguments, section off fallacies, and re-state positions that get misrepresented with nearly every post?

I'll try that, thanks.

I can tell you've never had to write an essay outside of the Internet.

My point was that politicians are expected to lie or withhold or spin or generally be untrustworthy, not in the sense that "it is a good thing" or it is "part of their job", but in the sense that is the public expectation that they are so untrustworthy, that they will.

Meanwhile public perception of the media WAS that they were trustworthy, and between the two, default more believable on a story than the politician because of the far more stringently enforced source expectations and detailed ethical code.

That was the point, that the media used to be near-universally inherently more trusted than politicians. Which was used to support my overall point of "The media lying all the time about Trump hurts their trustworthiness and raise his when he is vindicated about them being liars".

If that was the expectation, the expectation was baseless and foolish. It should be clear, also, that the misrepresentations bandied about Trump-- the fish-food thing, nonsense like that-- have by-and-large been unimportant in comparison with the President's own untrustworthiness on far bigger issues.

Keep in mind, more than half the time Trump whines about "fake news", he's using it to try to dismiss something perfectly true. It's a distraction for him; a method of burying criticism, including valid and true criticism. He has led his supporters into disbelieving the truth.

You have repeated my very point here, so I have to wonder just what you are actually interpreting my words as at this point.

Yes, Trump does call things fake news to discredit them.

The fact those "unimportant" stories are easy examples for him to point to and go "See, they lie all the time" is the point I was making, as it destroys their trustworthiness which their entire reputation depends on.

That was the point, by the media resorting to openly, unapologetically lying, it gives Trump's claims validity, and through that, him more trustworthiness. That was it, that they intentionally lying hurts them and helps Trump despite how much their lying about Trump is meant to hurt him.

Also, you should not be disingenuous about the scale of lies made about Trump. It is not just unimportant things, as legitimately fake news was important enough it was responsible for a small market crash, and the manufactured bullshit about the russia connection is not a little detail to get wrong but a willful, constant effort to outright lie and misrepresent.

No, being skeptical of the media because they are lying is not "not skepticism" just because I am not attacking the target of their lies equally to them just because you personally dislike the target of their lies and want to excuse their behavior. That is you forcing your own political bias, nothing more.

What I "personally dislike" is applying an entirely different standard to outlets that don't fit the ideological agenda. That is what Trump does, and that is what you were doing when you singled out only "opponents to Trump". You are the one using political agenda to distinguish between whether an outlet is trustworthy, not me.

Where did I apply a different standard? And not your "you aren't talking about the people I dislike" nonsense you have been complaining about either. Where did I apply a different standard of "the media being dishonest is hurting its reputation?"

At best I can assume where you might have gotten that would be me calling sites outlets like Fox and Breitbart out for already being known to be biased, but that is not a different standard applied, that is saying "these are already known to not be trusted because of that very issue" to demonstrate the very point. And I stand behind what I said, because they have gone even further into outright lying, outlets like CNN have lost any claim to being more trustworthy than FOX simply by virtue of them being caught outright lying through their teeth less lately.

My point was directed at the media's loss of trustworthiness, of course I will look at them as an example instead of wasting my time going "oh and the politician who people don't trust already is untrustworthy too". And I brought up reference to his supporters in the media as well with Fox and Breitbart, so you are outright lying about that at this point.

You made a throwaway reference, amidst numerous essay-length posts which constantly decried Trump's political opponents.

Yes, references I didn't even need to make at all since it doesn't matter if I equally devote my time to "both" sides for my point to be valid. And it was, the media's lying has hurt their reputation and helped Trump, specifically in relation to those Trump calls fake news (you know, those you keep complaining I am talking about). And this done in a discussion in a thread that stands as an example of those openly misrepresenting Trump as well, which is largely addressed by people like you more concerned about justifying the media's lying than on addressing my point it in the first place.

My not bitching about the people you dislike does not mean I support them. You thinking that does is a failure of your own thinking, so stop trying to apply that to me just because it makes it easier to argue against that strawman than it does what I actually am saying and arguing.

Your continued insistence that I am holding a position I am not after you have been corrected on it multiple times is maliciously dishonest, and I will call it out as such. I've addressed your misrepresentation, I'd explained why and how it is wrong, so persisting on it at this point is blatantly dishonest.

Seriously, your entire complaint is "you don't talk about the other side enough" in a discussion that has been intentionally directed and framed by your own replies to center around Trump being a bigger liar, in a thread about the media misrepresenting Trump.

Hey, you don't talk about the starving kids in Africa every post either. Lets apply your gross reaching here and say that means you support genocide through starvation. Do you see how inane that sounds? How much of a manufactured line of crap your strawman is?

You are complaining I am not talking about "the other side" as much as you want when my point was about the negative consequences of the media lying through their teeth, specifically with how it helps Trump by letting him be vindicated by calling them liars. Why would I spend a lot of time on it, or need to spend any at all for that matter, when my example of "Trump is using this to be vindicated" is predicated on the media lying about him and being caught in it over and over again?

The answer is, there is no reason for me to or requirement for me to. Your complaints are manufactured and dishonest attempts to paint my position into something it is not, solely for he sake of complaining that it is biased. Knock it off.

No, unlike yourself who I outright prove when you are being dishonest by making claims that are dishonest (such as by reminding you that despite how much you claim otherwise, I HAVE touched upon Trump's supporters lack of honesty too), I am simply applying your words here and trying to make sense of them.Those were your words, quoted exactly. And that is the consequence of your words. You defend and excuse the media's actions because the media displaying party bias is fully expected, referring to the outright lying, you know outright fabrication of the news and the truth, that I have been calling out as displaying party bias. And right after you condemn the government itself for outright fabricating despite the fact that between the two, the government should be FAR more influenced by the political biases you excuse in the media.

So which is it? Is it ok for the media to lie and manufacture the news because of the political ties, and thus even more likely and justifiable that the government to do so because they are literally run by those ties? Or is the government no expected to do that, and thus there is even less justification for the media to manufacture stories and news?

If I got something wrong, feel free to explain it, but as you presented and wrote it, THAT was the take away.

My words? They were not my bloody words. Where did I say it was fine and dandy for the media to lie and fabricate? That's a spurious accusation, something you pulled out of your ass-- and then you have the gall to insist that I'm being "dishonest" when I point that out.

This is what you said.

The government is expected to spin. For that matter, so are media outlets: we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected. The government is not expected to outright fabricate.

Your words right here.

And given the context of the discussion (it being in response to my point about the media lying hurting their reputation), this is the breakdown of the take-away from that.

> You say we expect the media to spin things because of party biases.

> You make this claim in response to examples of outright fabrication of stories.

>> Therefore, because of that and because of your defense of the media's lying thus far, the natural conclusion to reach is that we expect the media to outright fabricate stories (what you described as spinning) because of party biases.

> You then say the government is not expected to outright fabricate.

> But the government is outright run by the parties.

>< This creates the conflicting belief.

-> Either the media's outright misrepresenting and lying, which was the topic I was discussion, is ok because of party biases AND the government's outright misrepresentation and fabrication is ok for the same reason.

or

-> The the government fabricating is not ok regardless of party bias, and party biases is not enough justification for the media either.

This is the argument you presented in response to me talking about the media outright lying. This is the take away I got from your words. As I said before, if it is wrong, feel free to explain yourself better, but it is not a spurious accusation, like your own of my position before, and this is the second time I explained, clear as day, how I reached that conclusion.

For all your bluster about it, you have neither addressed the reasoning I made nor my point itself at all. Furthermore, while you huff and puff about my pointing out (and clearly showing how) your argument was terrible and asking for you to actually explain yourself, you refuse to accept my explanation of why your own insistence of my position is wrong despite it being explained multiple times now that it is.

Agema:If you want to use long-form dissection, try making it coherent, consistent, logical, properly sourced, with individual points made in a clear and concise fashion.

Otherwise it's not much a dissection as pouring soggy porridge over the thread.

You mean such by breaking up posts to address individual points, correct mistakes, explain and re-explain arguments, section off fallacies, and re-state positions that get misrepresented with nearly every post?

I'll try that, thanks.

I can tell you've never had to write an essay outside of the Internet.

On the contrary, it is just that outside of the internet, I have a lot more faith that the person it is reaching wont intentionally try to misrepresent me or be unable to follow the basic reasoning I used to reach conclusions.

As I said, the length is a consequence of adapting to this environment. Having to deal with logical fallacies, misrepresentation, and, as you demonstrate well here, useless snark, simply has me add more to the post to cover bases.

Heck, it proved itself required in this thread itself as my unneeded but still included examples of opposing bias media demonstrated that Silvanus was being dishonest in their misrepresentation of my position. When I have to deal with that sort of nonsense regularly, it gets lengthy.

But nice of you to demonstrate exactly why I feel it is needed with such uncharitable assumptions and worthless attempted snide side commentary.

Agema:If you want to use long-form dissection, try making it coherent, consistent, logical, properly sourced, with individual points made in a clear and concise fashion.

Otherwise it's not much a dissection as pouring soggy porridge over the thread.

You mean such by breaking up posts to address individual points, correct mistakes, explain and re-explain arguments, section off fallacies, and re-state positions that get misrepresented with nearly every post?

I'll try that, thanks.

I can tell you've never had to write an essay outside of the Internet.

It's funny, but when I wrote that comment I was part-way through marking a heap of final year essays. The gulf in quality is remarkable. It's not that I expect the same quality in an internet post that I do in a formal essay towards the end of a degree qualification, but I like to think anyone who has been through ~3 years of learning how to write effectively will bring some of that to an internet post.

The fact those "unimportant" stories are easy examples for him to point to and go "See, they lie all the time" is the point I was making, as it destroys their trustworthiness which their entire reputation depends on.

That was the point, by the media resorting to openly, unapologetically lying, it gives Trump's claims validity, and through that, him more trustworthiness. That was it, that they intentionally lying hurts them and helps Trump despite how much their lying about Trump is meant to hurt him.

Also, you should not be disingenuous about the scale of lies made about Trump. It is not just unimportant things, as legitimately fake news was important enough it was responsible for a small market crash, and the manufactured bullshit about the russia connection is not a little detail to get wrong but a willful, constant effort to outright lie and misrepresent.

I am aware of what your argument is. My point is that one source lying does not somehow convey "validity" to a different source, which also lies through its teeth. If someone believes it somehow does convey validity, that's ludicrous gullibility and partisanship on their part. Only through a total failure of critical thinking does that happen; it is not a rational conclusion.

Where did I apply a different standard? And not your "you aren't talking about the people I dislike" nonsense you have been complaining about either. Where did I apply a different standard of "the media being dishonest is hurting its reputation?"

You specifically singled out "anti-Trump media" as the lying, disingenuous sources, to which people are sceptical. You quite specifically accused one side of the political divide.

That is more than simply "not talking about people I dislike". You made the effort to single out only your political opponents.

This entire tract is peppered with aggressive personal insults and hostility. We can discuss this if we're both willing, but I'm not going to sit here and read paragraph after paragraph of constant accusation and insult.

The government is expected to spin. For that matter, so are media outlets: we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected. The government is not expected to outright fabricate.

Your words right here.

Yes, those are my words. Nowhere did I say it was fine to lie and fabricate. It's simply not in the quote, at all.

runic knight:And given the context of the discussion (it being in response to my point about the media lying hurting their reputation), this is the breakdown of the take-away from that.

> You say we expect the media to spin things because of party biases.

> You make this claim in response to examples of outright fabrication of stories.

>> Therefore, because of that and because of your defense of the media's lying thus far, the natural conclusion to reach is that we expect the media to outright fabricate stories (what you described as spinning) because of party biases.

> You then say the government is not expected to outright fabricate.

> But the government is outright run by the parties.

>< This creates the conflicting belief.

-> Either the media's outright misrepresenting and lying, which was the topic I was discussion, is ok because of party biases AND the government's outright misrepresentation and fabrication is ok for the same reason.

or

-> The the government fabricating is not ok regardless of party bias, and party biases is not enough justification for the media either.

This is the argument you presented in response to me talking about the media outright lying. This is the take away I got from your words. As I said before, if it is wrong, feel free to explain yourself better [...]

It's extremely simple.

We expect the media to spin-- to be selective about how/what they report, and to "interpret" the information to suit their political biases. It is not okay for them to lie, and I never said it was, at any point. Spin =/= lying.

We also expect political parties to spin, particularly in campaign efforts. It is also not okay for them to lie.

You seem to have merely added a number of additional steps and unnecessary suppositions, that's all.

===

I've snipped the end of your post, because it devolved again into yet more accusation and insult. I am seriously getting quite tired of the sheer level of hostility you're showing here.

There is something for us to discuss, clearly, but if you don't raise the standard of your discourse a little-- cutting out the constant personal accusations ("Blatant dishonesty", "maliciously dishonest", "manufactured and dishonest")-- then we can just end it. I don't have the interest in reading endless tracts of personal insults directed towards me. It tires me out.

The fact those "unimportant" stories are easy examples for him to point to and go "See, they lie all the time" is the point I was making, as it destroys their trustworthiness which their entire reputation depends on.

That was the point, by the media resorting to openly, unapologetically lying, it gives Trump's claims validity, and through that, him more trustworthiness. That was it, that they intentionally lying hurts them and helps Trump despite how much their lying about Trump is meant to hurt him.

Also, you should not be disingenuous about the scale of lies made about Trump. It is not just unimportant things, as legitimately fake news was important enough it was responsible for a small market crash, and the manufactured bullshit about the russia connection is not a little detail to get wrong but a willful, constant effort to outright lie and misrepresent.

I am aware of what your argument is. My point is that one source lying does not somehow convey "validity" to a different source, which also lies through its teeth. If someone believes it somehow does convey validity, that's ludicrous gullibility and partisanship on their part. Only through a total failure of critical thinking does that happen; it is not a rational conclusion.

It is not a matter of "one source lying", it is an entire series of promoting such lies, disregard for proper investigation, abandonment of any hint of journalistic ethics, abandonment of even attempting to be fair and impartial, and the willful and malicious dishonesty in address the series of mistakes, fuck-ups, and outright dishonesty. The media is a collective series of sources, yet when it comes to trump the sheer scale of dishonesty regarding him is breathtaking. People not trusting the news reporting on him is a rational conclusion to make in light of that. Them believing Trump instead after he is validated in his claims is less so, but not unexpected behavior.

Because the news media relies entirely on their reputation, them being so dishonest so often creates a pattern. They are a character witness that have been shown compromised, while the person they accused has been shown correct in calling them out. When it is a situation of competing claims, starting to go "you know, the guy they keep lying about might be telling the truth about other things they said he was lying about", it is a reasonable expectation that people will come to that conclusion. While I agree it is not good critical thinking to do that, the simple fact is that people will think such ways, especially when the media keeps giving them reason to do so by being caught pants down time after time lying and misrepresenting. After a while, you stop believing the boy crying wolf. After a while, you start to believe the person calling the boy a liar.

Where did I apply a different standard? And not your "you aren't talking about the people I dislike" nonsense you have been complaining about either. Where did I apply a different standard of "the media being dishonest is hurting its reputation?"

You specifically singled out "anti-Trump media" as the lying, disingenuous sources, to which people are sceptical. You quite specifically accused one side of the political divide.

That is more than simply "not talking about people I dislike". You made the effort to single out only your political opponents.

No, I made a point to concentrate on the topic closest related to the thread itself, you know, the one about trump and a story demonstrating the media misrepresenting him. Contrary to your accusation here though, those critical of trump aren't MY political opponents. They are just the most pertinent example of the media lying to make my point on, and most relevant to the thread itself. That you still persist in pretending that point is in any way affected by my lack of exhaustively calling out both sides is disingenuous of you, especially when it has been explained multiple times now.

Furthermore, you have made zero case as to why it matters even if I was bias, which begs the question as to why you are so hung up on accusing my position despite being corrected on it multiple times.

This entire tract is peppered with aggressive personal insults and hostility. We can discuss this if we're both willing, but I'm not going to sit here and read paragraph after paragraph of constant accusation and insult.

This coming immediately after you make claims of my position? Or after long series of posts where you do the same? Spare me your outrage. You are right on one part, I pepper these in, though unlike your entire reliance upon them for points, I both actually support them, and have a justification for them relating t the larger point.

Or to reword that, you dishonestly (and after being corrected and explained to multiple times now, your continued repetition of the claim about MY position is nothing but dishonesty at this point) making claims and accusations of my position is often all you have as a counter-point. Me pointing that out and making conclusions about you from them is actually worthwhile solely because in making such accusations based on nothing but your personal insistence, it makes YOUR character relevant to the argument as intentional or not, you, by lack of anything else to address my reasoning or position, present your claim against me as if you are expert testimony when it relies on your insistence that I am wrong about my own position (this is compounded when you repeat the dishonest claim when it has been addressed and explained while still not supporting it with anything but your insistence of MY position).

When your reply is "you are only attacking those opposed to trump" after the claim itself has been shown to be outright false, and it has been explained multiple times why I use examples there-in, I have to call that out for what it is and what it makes me conclude about you, especially when that conclusion is relevant to your support of that claim (your own reliability as a "witness"). When you persist in it, and refuse to actually address the points made addressing it, you validate that conclusion and demonstrate why it is actually relevant as a point in and of itself. It ends up as me going "you are losing faulty logic and fallacy and here is why" to which your rebuttal is attempting to tone police, another rhetorical trick worthless to the discussion.

If you would stop making baseless accusations about my position, or actually addressed my explanation of why I use specific examples, or even just explained it better than repeating yourself of "you only talk about trump's opponents", I would not be forced to address your "criticism" by calling out the "expert witness" for being dishonest as it would have a lot less relevance.

Granted I would still pepper some jabs in it if you kept doing other dishonest things. but it would matter a lot less if your didn't repeatedly rely on your own reliability in your insistence of my position despite my claims, explanation, and arguments to the contrary.

Or you could just accept that your accusation is unfounded and worthless overall to the discussion and stop trying to claim my position is what it is not. Not having to repeat myself every post correcting your dishonesty about my position would likely save a lot of this discussion about you being dishonest in your portrayal of my position by virtue of you no longer doing that.

The government is expected to spin. For that matter, so are media outlets: we accept that most of them have party biases; it's fully expected. The government is not expected to outright fabricate.

Your words right here.

Yes, those are my words. Nowhere did I say it was fine to lie and fabricate. It's simply not in the quote, at all.

runic knight:And given the context of the discussion (it being in response to my point about the media lying hurting their reputation), this is the breakdown of the take-away from that.

> You say we expect the media to spin things because of party biases.

> You make this claim in response to examples of outright fabrication of stories.

>> Therefore, because of that and because of your defense of the media's lying thus far, the natural conclusion to reach is that we expect the media to outright fabricate stories (what you described as spinning) because of party biases.

> You then say the government is not expected to outright fabricate.

> But the government is outright run by the parties.

>< This creates the conflicting belief.

-> Either the media's outright misrepresenting and lying, which was the topic I was discussion, is ok because of party biases AND the government's outright misrepresentation and fabrication is ok for the same reason.

or

-> The the government fabricating is not ok regardless of party bias, and party biases is not enough justification for the media either.

This is the argument you presented in response to me talking about the media outright lying. This is the take away I got from your words. As I said before, if it is wrong, feel free to explain yourself better [...]

It's extremely simple.

We expect the media to spin-- to be selective about how/what they report, and to "interpret" the information to suit their political biases. It is not okay for them to lie, and I never said it was, at any point. Spin =/= lying.

We also expect political parties to spin, particularly in campaign efforts. It is also not okay for them to lie.

You seem to have merely added a number of additional steps and unnecessary suppositions, that's all.

My complaint from the start was not about spin, but about dishonesty, misrepresentation, and outright lying. My sub-point was about how the public would even be far more expecting of a politician to lie instead of a news media site.

As such, your reply concerning "spin" (that is often how such dishonesty in both media and politics is downplayed or even defended) seems like it is discussing the same phenomenon I called out (the media's lying and dishonesty) and it was done in reply to my specifically addressing media lying.

If your rebuttal was truly meant to be discussing only the media that "spins" (a vague description in and of itself), then the entirely of your reply in that section was the fallacy of Equivocation in your arguing against a claim relating to the media lying with a point about the media making spin, two separate elements that therefore make your point moot to the discussion's topic itself.

If that is the case I can easily dismiss the entirety of that portion of your post concerning all of that as irrelevant to the discussion at hand, and I wait for you to put forth something actually relevant instead, since otherwise you are discussing something different than I was.

I've snipped the end of your post, because it devolved again into yet more accusation and insult. I am seriously getting quite tired of the sheer level of hostility you're showing here.

Then why do you insist on being dishonest in your claims of my position, ignoring explanation correcting your claims, and forcing the issue on the point to be a matter of your personal character as opposed to arguments themselves by insisting that my position is not what you pretend it is as I have already explained to many times?

There is something for us to discuss, clearly, but if you don't raise the standard of your discourse a little-- cutting out the constant personal accusations ("Blatant dishonesty", "maliciously dishonest", "manufactured and dishonest")-- then we can just end it. I don't have the interest in reading endless tracts of personal insults directed towards me. It tires me out.

I am tired of having to re-explain my position that it is not what you claim it is, only for you to repeat your claim based on only your own insistence. Perhaps if your "arguments" and behavior were not so definable as dishonest and your position so reliant upon your own insistence, I would be far less inclined to call it what it is as a means to address it.

You can be unhappy with my tone all you like, but that is not an argument, nor a defense of your own, your claims, or your tactics. If you can't even put forth the good faith to accept what someone says their position is, then I can not find a lot of effort to care if you are offended that I call that out. And that is a different thing than misunderstanding someone's position, or pointing to unintended or unintentional ramifications of that position such as I did with your "spin" wording. If you refuse to accept when someone goes "that is not my position" after they explained it several times, then you forfeit any value to your offense at being called dishonest.

You mean such by breaking up posts to address individual points, correct mistakes, explain and re-explain arguments, section off fallacies, and re-state positions that get misrepresented with nearly every post?

I'll try that, thanks.

I can tell you've never had to write an essay outside of the Internet.

It's funny, but when I wrote that comment I was part-way through marking a heap of final year essays. The gulf in quality is remarkable. It's not that I expect the same quality in an internet post that I do in a formal essay towards the end of a degree qualification, but I like to think anyone who has been through ~3 years of learning how to write effectively will bring some of that to an internet post.

Well considering I expect people online who are by now grown adults to have integrity enough to be honest in online discussions, to say nothing of not posting solely for the sake of sniping in a public forum like they were highschool meangirls, I guess the internet is full of disappointments we have to learn to tolerate.

Well considering I expect people online who are by now grown adults to have integrity enough to be honest in online discussions, to say nothing of not posting solely for the sake of sniping in a public forum like they were highschool meangirls, I guess the internet is full of disappointments we have to learn to tolerate.

I'm sorry you feel that you're such a disappointment to yourself. I hope you can learn from the experience.

Well considering I expect people online who are by now grown adults to have integrity enough to be honest in online discussions, to say nothing of not posting solely for the sake of sniping in a public forum like they were highschool meangirls, I guess the internet is full of disappointments we have to learn to tolerate.

I'm sorry you feel that you're such a disappointment to yourself. I hope you can learn from the experience.

Unsurprisingly given your history, but it seems you failed to read my reply properly this time as well. I'll do what I do every time that happens and take the time to explain things as in depth as I feel it needs to be. Ah well, I know how you all love length.

I was saying I was disappointed in those who chose to act like sniping children because they have no actual reason or argument to address what others say that they dislike, or just nothing of value to add at all, instead of just growing up and acting like adults. You know the sort, they are all over the internet, those that willfully misrepresent positions, dishonestly make accusations, or just attack someone's post with sniping barbs devoid of even relating to the topic solely to be a jerk or to bait responses they can report so that they can be moderated. The sort who would rather act like forum gatekeepers by attacking those who don't respect their mean-girl clique rather than have to actually defend their opinions or address uncomfortable truths they refuse accept. Sort of common on some facebook groups, among other places online.

I know it may have been worded a little complex there in that last reply, but don't you worry, I am not disappointed in myself at all. Hell, considering that level of petty worthless mean-girl behavior I put up with online, I am rather content in my ability to call it out, deconstruct it, and show exactly why that sort of thinking is flawed and outright terrible, much like rubbing a dog's nose in their mess. I suppose, as disappointed as I am that grown adults online willingly lie through their teeth, snipe like playground grade-schoolers, and throw tantrums and whine to their parents like spoiled children when they are disagreed with at all, I can at least be happy that I am not one of them.

And I suppose I can be happy that for all their loudness and bluster, they really aren't that large a presence online despite how they may delude themselves and they really don't matter in the end.

So, was my point clearer this time? I would hate to see you misunderstand it again.

You had a chance, and chose to continue with the same level of hostility.

I'm not going to take part in that. I don't have to sit here and read personal insult after personal insult. Honestly, it's an emotional drain to do so.

Have fun.

That is fine, your participation has always been voluntary, so you really don't need to announce your exit. Simply not replying tells me you are, you know, not going to reply.

But since you wanted draw specific attention of your leaving, we might as well address that. Considering you left after having your open and unapologetic dishonesty about me and my position called out though, to say nothing of the behavior of your allies of position such as agema there, I will enjoy a chuckle at the irony that you put on such a theatrical exit while claiming hostility as the reason. But that does seem a theme shared throughout your position and I might as well address it as the conversation wraps up.

Simply put, you have in your position and in your behavior demonstrated an obvious selective bias. I touched on it before related to the topic of the media's dishonesty, and relating to your refusal to accept when someone clarified your strawman, and even now when the behavior of yourself and your friends is blatantly hostile yet you only see the problem when your less than hospitable tone and tactics is being reflected back. You are applying two standards towards everything, where your own stance and behavior, and that of your friends, are forgiven and judged differently than those of your enemies. The consequence of that hypocrisy is any attempt to claim morality fails entirely, be it in the argument itself by attacking me for a position I don't have in supporting Trump, or in the overall discussion by attacking me for "hostility" while you and your friends do worse without even the justification of it relating to the argument itself that I at least had. Sort of why I don't rely on appeals to morality as the sole pillar of my position, I like something with a little more stability, such as logic and reasoning.

My point was simple. The media's lying and dishonesty regarding Trump hurts their integrity, and destroy the public's trust in them as a result. Their own actions were making them untrustworthy, and no amount of blaming trump or republicans or anyone else would take that personal responsibility for their own lies and dishonesty away. You can see this dozens of ways, from how Trump's "fake news" narrative gained traction by the media being the constant living embodiment of it, to how the media's respectability has tanked, to even simple things such as major publication stories being dismissed because of where they come from and those who dismissed them being vindicated when the latest "breaking news" turned out to be grossly misrepresented when not out and out fabricated.

Your replies have been a constant "but them" deflection. You attacked Trump's trustworthiness, when it doesn't matter to the case concerning if the media is trustworthy or their action are honest. You tried to divide the issue when you lied about me only caring about one side, when I demonstrated and clarified several times I considered media on both sides guilty of this and that the conversation framed around Trump more specifically because the thread related to trump more and the thread stood as testament to the media lying about trump, and you tried equivocation to downplay what the media did as "spin" despite that being irrelevant from the start and seemingly injected into the discussion to justify what they did while simultaneously attacking another group (this time being the federal government).

So, if you wish to leave because you found my calling out your dishonest behavior, faulty arguments, and fallacious rhetoric to be too hostile, very well. Have a good day and good luck.

But since you wanted draw specific attention of your leaving, we might as well address that. Considering you left after having your open and unapologetic dishonesty [...]

Aggression, again.

Discussion in any sphere-- in person or online-- is subject to an environment existing in which that discussion is mutually respectful for the people involved, at least to a certain extent. Usually, an environment has to exist in which the discussion is at the very least not severely unpleasant to be in.

It is severely unpleasant to read personal insult after personal insult, accusations of dishonesty repeated over and over again within the same paragraph, and other furious hostility. Why would anybody willingly put up with that? It's not conducive to discussion, and it's not conducive to a calm and enjoyable evening.

This is not how anybody should speak to anybody. You seriously need to take a long look at the way you communicate with people online.

My point was simple. The media's lying and dishonesty regarding Trump hurts their integrity, and destroy the public's trust in them as a result. Their own actions were making them untrustworthy, and no amount of blaming trump or republicans or anyone else would take that personal responsibility for their own lies and dishonesty away. You can see this dozens of ways, from how Trump's "fake news" narrative gained traction by the media being the constant living embodiment of it, to how the media's respectability has tanked, to even simple things such as major publication stories being dismissed because of where they come from and those who dismissed them being vindicated when the latest "breaking news" turned out to be grossly misrepresented when not out and out fabricated.

Your point might be simple, but it's also pretty much wrong. Sorry. o.O

Putting faith in Trump to more honest than the media or other politicians isn't rational, or critical thinking, it's clinging to a comfortable narrative. Trump made a lot of big claims when he initially ran for office, and of course spouted regular claims both as President and before he declared his candidacy, claims that include (in no particular order);

-He would be able to fix everything, and it would be so easy. ('easy' is a word he used pretty liberally.)-He had a secret plan to defeat ISIS. (Which turned out to be 'come up with a plan to defeat ISIS.')-He would fight on behalf of the common working class, and despite his wealth he never considered himself part of the upper class.-He would not only build a big, beautiful wall that would totes keep any Mexican who couldn't find a ladder out, but MEXICO would be the ones who paid for it. -He was a genius, and the best (insert profession here) ever.-Regulation is totes the reason the coal industry is withering and he'll fix it.-Obama is totally every horrible thing his detractors feared he was. =P Didn't matter how stupid the claim or how overwhelming the evidence against it, if Trump could shit on Obama he was full steam ahead, as Donald's hate boner for the man was pretty strong. Co-founder of ISIS? Yeah! Yelled at a Trump protestor, totes trust me? Darn tootin'! Totally got evidence he wasn't born in the U.S.? ANY DAY NOW!

There's more, obviously. But ultimately, a lot of these statements resonated with different people not because they were true, or at times even hard to disprove, but rather because these people wanted or even needed them to be true. Coal miners who didn't understand enough about what was actually ailing coal (we just don't really need it like we once did, and automation reduces the need for human labor) believed the entire thing could be blamed on environmentalists, and took Trump at his word when he said reducing regulations would fix everything. People who felt jilted, many times understantably so, by Washington establishment believed the rich guy with a storied history of looking out solely for himself would somehow fight 'For The People.' Folks who loathed Obama, a man who ended up garnering a lot more support, admiration and general kudos than his predecessor ever did, loved anything that made Obama look like an ass, even when video evidence disputed it.

Believing many of these things were never particularly grounded or rational, but they were comforting, and if anything that can be even harder to dispel. =P So when Trump says that the outlets who just so happen to be pointing out all his lies and bullshit are 'Fake News,' it's assuring people who are confronted with these articles and videos showing his contradictions and falsehoods that they can just... ignore it. Trump Is Always Honest And Anything That Says Trump Told A Lie Is Lying. Again, not rational. But comforting for those who absolutely need him to have been honest on all points.

If you're a former coal miner, believing Trump pulled a fast one means having to face the likelihood that the industry you're trained in is becoming all but obsolete. Even worse would be the realization that the President who promised to help you instead sought to strip funding from the services and programs that would have helped you transition to another field of employment. That's an immensely bitter pill to have to swallow, and for many I'd imagine it's far more comforting to just think any and all reports on the budget the White House released awhile back is Fake News.

It doesn't matter how much or how little the media actually gets shit wrong or gets caught making fabrications. Even in an ideal world where they never did, Trump would just make up lies they supposedly told, and people would believe him. Trump being taken seriously never boiled down to credibility, he has none, but rather that he told plenty of people exactly what they wanted to hear, and has continued to do so.

Basically, if doubting media accounts due to their spotty track record is rational- and I think a healthy dose of cynicism is advisable, absolutely- then doubting Trump due to his consistently shitty track record must follow. That is rational thought, that is actually recognizing a given situation. Otherwise it's absolutely a double-standard, and the problem with a double-standard is the actual details and circumstances become meaningless. =P No manner how much less the media lies, or how much more Trump lies, many of these same people will side with Trump until something happens to shake them out of it that can't be dismissed as 'Fake News.'

runic knight:I was saying I was disappointed in those who chose to act like sniping children...

Indeed - hence why as you spend so much time you spend being hostile, rude, inflammatory or just plain abusive towards others, so you should be a disappointment to yourself.

It seems you still fail to actually read my posts, despite your eagerness to reply to them so lets give this anther go.

My posts are full of points and arguments, careful break-downs of argument and rhetoric, and in-depth explanation.

Now my post previously, notice the bolded.

I was saying I was disappointed in those who chose to act like sniping children because they have no actual reason or argument to address what others say that they dislike, or just nothing of value to add at all, instead of just growing up and acting like adults.

You seem to think my complaint is the addition of sniping or just being mean.

It is not. It is the use of that in place of any other point, argument or discussion. A barb here or there in a post that has an actual point and is legitimately discussing the topic or addressing the argument fairly is perhaps in poor taste, but can also be fun, witty, or god help us, even funny. Got to avoid the usual fallacy pitfalls there, but snide's going to snide.

Those that have nothing but such venom to spit to the point of ignoring arguments or derailing discussion on the other hand, well, they are just laughable in a different way...

That is fine, your participation has always been voluntary, so you really don't need to announce your exit. Simply not replying tells me you are, you know, not going to reply.

It was courtesy. The reason for my leaving is pertinent-- I specifically wanted you to know it was a result of constant insults and hostility.

Yet you refused to address your own? Rather telling about your motivation there when you care more about making a spectacle of leaving then on actually being an example of what you wanted. Especially after numerous times explained to you exactly what and how you were doing.

But since you wanted draw specific attention of your leaving, we might as well address that. Considering you left after having your open and unapologetic dishonesty [...]

Aggression, again.

Calling a spade a spade is not "aggression". While I try to take such insinuations in good humor when you have a point, when all you have is such attempts to attack me, they quickly become distraction and get called out. Making a scene about me daring to call out your behavior because you think I should just accept and allow it when you continue to misrepresent me or lie about my position pretty much the same tactic as gaslighting in abusive relationships.

All I can read your reply as is this.

"How dare you be so rude to me after I repeatedly ignored your explanation and clarification only to repeat the exact same accusation against you again! The nerve!"

Discussion in any sphere-- in person or online-- is subject to an environment existing in which that discussion is mutually respectful for the people involved, at least to a certain extent. Usually, an environment has to exist in which the discussion is at the very least not severely unpleasant to be in.

Agreed. Things such as arguing in good faith, giving benefit of the doubt, and actually respecting your opponent when they explain to you multiple times that the position you demonized them as halving is untrue are vastly important. So is not being intentionally dishonest by repeating claims already addressed and corrected or relying on logical fallacies that have been already called out and shown flawed are too.

You are right, there needs to be mutual respect, and as I have addressed on you before, you were given the respect your attitude and behavior deserved, complete with careful explanation of what it was, why it was wrong, and how you should cease it.

It is severely unpleasant to read personal insult after personal insult, accusations of dishonesty repeated over and over again within the same paragraph, and other furious hostility. Why would anybody willingly put up with that? It's not conducive to discussion, and it's not conducive to a calm and enjoyable evening.

Yet you expected me to read accusation and misrepresentation of my position, time after time after explaining why it was incorrect? You play a double standard there, or have a very warped sense of "respect". Perhaps the word you wish to use is simply "obedience".

This is not how anybody should speak to anybody. You seriously need to take a long look at the way you communicate with people online.

No, this is exactly how someone should call out abusive, manipulative behavior. Address the facts of it, do not yield to tone-policing or appeals to double standards, and maintain respect enough for one self to not allow someone else to get away with outright lies abut you, your position, your thoughts, or your intentions.

Lets call this EXACTLY what this was.

I did not allow you to lie about my position.

I did not allow you to persist in repeating lies already addressed.

I did not allow you to use logical fallacies in place of arguments.

I did not allow you to tone-police me into apologizing for the above.

You taking offense to that is noted. You fleeing the discussion when I would not let your continued misrepresentation go without comment is noted. You ignoring your friend for being there solely to level snide insults and accusations my way is noted. But none of it is going to make me accept you being dishonest about me, my position, my motivation, or my thoughts after being corrected on it time and again.

My point was simple. The media's lying and dishonesty regarding Trump hurts their integrity, and destroy the public's trust in them as a result. Their own actions were making them untrustworthy, and no amount of blaming trump or republicans or anyone else would take that personal responsibility for their own lies and dishonesty away. You can see this dozens of ways, from how Trump's "fake news" narrative gained traction by the media being the constant living embodiment of it, to how the media's respectability has tanked, to even simple things such as major publication stories being dismissed because of where they come from and those who dismissed them being vindicated when the latest "breaking news" turned out to be grossly misrepresented when not out and out fabricated.

Your point might be simple, but it's also pretty much wrong. Sorry. o.O

Putting faith in Trump to more honest than the media or other politicians isn't rational, or critical thinking, it's clinging to a comfortable narrative. Trump made a lot of big claims when he initially ran for office, and of course spouted regular claims both as President and before he declared his candidacy, claims that include (in no particular order);

-He would be able to fix everything, and it would be so easy. ('easy' is a word he used pretty liberally.)-He had a secret plan to defeat ISIS. (Which turned out to be 'come up with a plan to defeat ISIS.')-He would fight on behalf of the common working class, and despite his wealth he never considered himself part of the upper class.-He would not only build a big, beautiful wall that would totes keep any Mexican who couldn't find a ladder out, but MEXICO would be the ones who paid for it. -He was a genius, and the best (insert profession here) ever.-Regulation is totes the reason the coal industry is withering and he'll fix it.-Obama is totally every horrible thing his detractors feared he was. =P Didn't matter how stupid the claim or how overwhelming the evidence against it, if Trump could shit on Obama he was full steam ahead, as Donald's hate boner for the man was pretty strong. Co-founder of ISIS? Yeah! Yelled at a Trump protestor, totes trust me? Darn tootin'! Totally got evidence he wasn't born in the U.S.? ANY DAY NOW!

There's more, obviously. But ultimately, a lot of these statements resonated with different people not because they were true, or at times even hard to disprove, but rather because these people wanted or even needed them to be true. Coal miners who didn't understand enough about what was actually ailing coal (we just don't really need it like we once did, and automation reduces the need for human labor) believed the entire thing could be blamed on environmentalists, and took Trump at his word when he said reducing regulations would fix everything. People who felt jilted, many times understantably so, by Washington establishment believed the rich guy with a storied history of looking out solely for himself would somehow fight 'For The People.' Folks who loathed Obama, a man who ended up garnering a lot more support, admiration and general kudos than his predecessor ever did, loved anything that made Obama look like an ass, even when video evidence disputed it.

Believing many of these things were never particularly grounded or rational, but they were comforting, and if anything that can be even harder to dispel. =P So when Trump says that the outlets who just so happen to be pointing out all his lies and bullshit are 'Fake News,' it's assuring people who are confronted with these articles and videos showing his contradictions and falsehoods that they can just... ignore it. Trump Is Always Honest And Anything That Says Trump Told A Lie Is Lying. Again, not rational. But comforting for those who absolutely need him to have been honest on all points.

If you're a former coal miner, believing Trump pulled a fast one means having to face the likelihood that the industry you're trained in is becoming all but obsolete. Even worse would be the realization that the President who promised to help you instead sought to strip funding from the services and programs that would have helped you transition to another field of employment. That's an immensely bitter pill to have to swallow, and for many I'd imagine it's far more comforting to just think any and all reports on the budget the White House released awhile back is Fake News.

It doesn't matter how much or how little the media actually gets shit wrong or gets caught making fabrications. Even in an ideal world where they never did, Trump would just make up lies they supposedly told, and people would believe him. Trump being taken seriously never boiled down to credibility, he has none, but rather that he told plenty of people exactly what they wanted to hear, and has continued to do so.

Basically, if doubting media accounts due to their spotty track record is rational- and I think a healthy dose of cynicism is advisable, absolutely- then doubting Trump due to his consistently shitty track record must follow. That is rational thought, that is actually recognizing a given situation. Otherwise it's absolutely a double-standard, and the problem with a double-standard is the actual details and circumstances become meaningless. =P No manner how much less the media lies, or how much more Trump lies, many of these same people will side with Trump until something happens to shake them out of it that can't be dismissed as 'Fake News.'

You make great points and arguments, but you seem to be arguing against positions and stances I don't have for most of your post. You get back on track near the end, but most of your post boils down to "Trump is untrustworthy" a fact I don't disagree with.

My point related to the media itself, and how their actions, specifically in their lying about trump, has hurt their reputation.

Trump being a liar who's pants are on fire is entirely irrelevant to the media's reputation being in the toilet because of their own lying. It relates as a sort of grading scale of how far they slipped, and as a negative consequence of their slip being something Trump is taking advantage of, but the consequence of the media being trusted less is ultimately a result of the media being dishonest over and over.

I don't disagree that Trump is pointing to the fake news to monopolize off of it. In fact, I readily agreed and said similar myself earlier in the thread. The problem is, that by being the example of trump being vindicated in his claims of fake news, it is making others doubt the other claims of the media, or even trust trump a little more. This is compounded by the problem that trumps track record of lies is provided by the media to the public, as their lack of trustworthiness being repeated not only hurts their current reputation, but undermines their previous one. Which includes them telling people about Trump lying.

Essentially, you have a character witness caught lying making people question the previous testimony as well.

The people who said trump is a bad guy are revealed to be liars, exactly as the bad guy claimed from the start. This is a terrible problem for the media and one of the biggest reasons they were suppose to be unbiased in the first place.

And that is entirely on the media, as their trustworthiness is their sole marketing point. They must be trusted to be any use on delivering news, otherwise, what is the point? They end up like the inquirer talking about batboy every week.

Furthermore, my point was not toward those on either extreme that would either never trust trump or never doubt him, but those toward the middle who are swayable. And stories being shown misrepresentative, if not outright manufactured, have impacted them and their opinion on Trump telling the truth. Hell, the recent reveal that the media actively helped the FBI to illegally surveillance Trump has only validated claims Trump made before, both about media bias, and that he was spyed on. This sort of thing undermines every statement and story about him by the media, and for good reason.

But the fault of the media lying in the first place is entirely on the media deciding to do that to promote their bias.

In the end, you are absolutely right that people should be cynical of both the media and trump, but most people aren't going to put that much effort and time. They will slide into the usual tribalism until something jars them out of it, or it is seen as a detriment. The media being in a competition with Trump for trustworthiness, in any capacity, is a testament to how bad things have gotten there. And people feeling lied to by the media will not respond favorably to it. No one likes to be the fool, though so many slip into habits that let them. After trusting the media is revealed to be selling the lies, they will often dismiss the rest of what the media said as untrustworthy. And without the media being trusted, all those stories about what a terrible person trump is amount to nothing more than mean-spirited gossip, regardless if they were ultimately true or not.

And down the line, when Trump does something really stupid, not enough people will believe the media who cried wolf.

Yeah, I long since gave up, because there's so little worth reading in them.

They're massively over-written bad to mediocre arguments coupled with unshakeable conviction in your own infallibility. Then turning to over-written boasting and abuse whenever you meet opposition, because as far as I can tell you cannot understand why anyone might disagree with you except that they are dishonest and/or stupid. You can't even let a guy explain he's not enjoying it and walk off without handing out a lengthy essay of last-word futile argumentation and abuse.

That sort of combination of obstinacy and unpleasantness is just about most toxic debating style it is possible to have, and drags discussion after discussion into rancour. No-one should have to engage with that sort of debate style. But it's fun to sit on the sidelines laughing.

Yeah, there is a certain entertainment in watching that kind of thing. As much as it is irritating to see that the guy just doesn't get it, the fact that it will cause him so much frustration in life - to be stonewalled by those who will never come to his way of thinking, constantly - does put a smirk on the face of onlookers.

I think we both seem to agree on the base points- Trump untrustworthy, media also gets up to nasty shit, etc- so the point of disagreement seems to mostly be coming down to emphasis, i.e. the level of impact each factor has in the end result.

A lot of the detail and stuff in the middle was mostly because I like to be really, really detailed, and ultimately the point wasn't simply to prove that Trump tells loads of lies; it's which he told, why he would tell them, and the behavior they elicited. If you'll indulge me for a moment, Trump spent decades before running for office lying about his wealth, his success, etc, etc, etc, and they served a simple purpose beyond ego-stroking or fucking over investors. A lot of his financial success hinged on licensing his name to other properties and businesses. Trump hotels, Trump apartments, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, etc. His biggest success was, ironically, selling on the idea of success, and it shows. He literally slapped his name on buildings, got spots on TV and movies, even let himself get roasted for publicity, (where reportedly one of the very few 'off-limit' topics was saying he didn't have as much money as he said he did,) all to keep his name circulating in the public consciousness. Trump became a much bigger success as a marketing brand than anything else.

Trump running for office is much the same; it wasn't just about saying how awesome and smart and successful he was as he lied his ass off. Those lies served a purpose. They were intended to create a strong emotional investment in those who would see Trump as their one, best chance of having their issues addressed, whether it was inadequate health care, toppling ISIS or restoring the coal industry. Ironically, Trump's efforts to inflate his reputation as a businessman would serve him well in this regard, as the name 'Trump' was indeed often associated with success and great acumen specifically because he marketed himself that way.

By insisting that not only was he going to fix everything, but that he would do it 'so easily,' the mindset for many likely became 'Only Trump Can Save Us,' and that level of absolute conviction is nigh impossible to dissuade, even when evidence contradicting it is staring one right in the face.

This is half illustration, half fun historical tidbit, but I refer you to a book from 1956 titled 'When Prophecy Fails,' which was a bit of an undercover report on a small cult that believed 1) God was going to end the world on a specific date, and 2) he would also send a spaceship shortly before doomsday to rescue the Cultists and bring them to paradise. Suffice to say, it did not, and He did not, with the cult leader insisting their group's prayers had 'saved the world,' and yet despite the Doomsday cult literally not having their Doomsday, those who'd already formed strong emotional investment in the idea- such as quitting their jobs or other 'the world is totally ending tomorrow' shit you can't take back easily- believed even MORE strongly in the cult. I'd really recommend looking into this, it's quite a fascinating bit of social science history, ranking right up there with the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. :3

Which circles me back to what I'd said in the earlier post. To phrase it as plainly as I can; I've no doubt that plenty of people are skeptical, healthily so, of media reports. But when it comes to people instinctively siding with Trump on a given issue- any given issue, really- I do sincerely believe the vast, vast majority would be siding with Trump regardless of the media's behavior.

Ultimately (in my opinion, of course,) their support of Trump isn't due to a rejection of the media's actual failings- though they will raise them as justification- but are rather a rejection of the media because they're emotionally invested in Trump being 'on their side.' =P Take away shitty media behavior, and they'd still be Team Trump, they'd just have to find or fabricate a new excuse. Similarly, Trump's use of the term isn't due to, again, the media's actual failings, it's fulfilling a very specific purpose; keeping the followers who feel they need Trump firmly on his side.

At worst I'd suggest that the media's reputation might push people into the middle ground of not outright believing reports sight unseen, but honestly I don't see that as a bad thing. As Internet access has only continued to spread and expand, misinformation and fabrications are only going to go on the rise, both from literal 'Fake News' sites, (there's a topic I could go on, and on, and ON about, lemme tell ya,) to mainstream outlets trying to come up with something 'edgy' enough to snag clicks, to individual reporters who lie to everyone including their own employer just to try and stand out on a sensational headline. Heck, in another thread I think someone mentioned an organization tried to 'trick' one of the newspaper outlets into printing 'fake news' by sending them a false witness, I can only imagine such 'gotcha' efforts are only going to increase over time as organizations become more and more determined to help Trump's Fake News narrative.

If people are being taught to be skeptical of the media, (and I mean the WHOLE media, which on the Internet is a fucking vast entity, dear God,) I'd call that a positive... so long as that skepticism is constructive and reasonable, which in the case of most Trump supporters it's not. =P I could go into some examples on the sorta stuff I try to look out for when parsing media reports, but this post is probably going on long enough. @[email protected]

TL;DR: Again, I don't think we necessarily disagree with regards to the broad strokes, I think our disagreement seems to be just how much the media's actual actions impact the support Trump is receiving. I just don't think that we'd really be in that different a place if the media was either a) more honest, or b) just better at avoiding getting caught. At best Trump would just be saying 'THEY'RE TELLING LIES, TRUST ME!" and his supporters would be saying "YEAH THEY'RE TELLING LIES, TRUST HIM!!"

Yeah, I long since gave up, because there's so little worth reading in them.

Yet you feel the need to respond to something you openly admit to refusing to read? That is a very telling statement about both your intellectual dishonesty and your lack of engaging in good faith.

Why bother replying at all, if you aren't replying to what someone actually said?

They're massively over-written bad to mediocre arguments coupled with unshakeable conviction in your own infallibility. Then turning to over-written boasting and abuse whenever you meet opposition, because as far as I can tell you cannot understand why anyone might disagree with you except that they are dishonest and/or stupid. You can't even let a guy explain he's not enjoying it and walk off without handing out a lengthy essay of last-word futile argumentation and abuse.

That sort of combination of obstinacy and unpleasantness is just about most toxic debating style it is possible to have, and drags discussion after discussion into rancour. No-one should have to engage with that sort of debate style. But it's fun to sit on the sidelines laughing.

If you are going to discuss... no, going to talk with someone in any degree, there is some fundamental basics required. Actually reading what they say and accepting they are being honest with their thoughts is one of them. That your friend ignored that is why it was called out. That they stomped their feet and stormed off about being called out is why I called that out too. And that you openly flaunt the fact you don't even read my replies is why I call that out.

You can laugh at the length of my posts, and you can claim they are mediocre, but when you can't even extend basic courtesy of listening to your opponent, why would I ever care about your complaints?

As for this bit in particular though.

as far as I can tell you cannot understand why anyone might disagree with you except that they are dishonest and/or stupid.

This is special. See, I ask, many times even, for people to explain their reasoning. And I make sure to clarify and explain my own as much as needed. I do this so I CAN understand better. When someone ignores that to repeat outright lies about my position though, well, I am left with no choice but to assume that they are dishonest. Not because they disagree, but because they are actively and repeatedly lying, misrepresenting, or otherwise being dishonest.

You know, that is always the willfully dishonest defense of such behavior too, the lie that I am calling someone stupid of dishonest for disagreement.

I am not.

I call someone dishonest because their behavior is undeniably so. That they do it because they disagree with me is their motivation, but disagreement itself is not nor is it ever my justification for calling it dishonest. And I make damn sure to display and explain that. But I suppose that requires you actually read my replies and engage in good faith in the first place.

Things like your happy boast about not bothering to read my posts further demonstrate the lack of honest intent in engaging as well. So, congrats at being the example of why you are wrong here specifically. I am not calling you dishonest because you disagree, you are acting dishonest because you disagree and pretend that because your motivation for being dishonest is my justification for calling it out.

For someone who claims I fail to understand how someone can disagree, this is rather ironic that you fail to understand why someone's behavior can be called out for reasons beyond the motivations for that behavior.

I think we both seem to agree on the base points- Trump untrustworthy, media also gets up to nasty shit, etc- so the point of disagreement seems to mostly be coming down to emphasis, i.e. the level of impact each factor has in the end result.

Fair enough there.

A lot of the detail and stuff in the middle was mostly because I like to be really, really detailed, and ultimately the point wasn't simply to prove that Trump tells loads of lies; it's which he told, why he would tell them, and the behavior they elicited. If you'll indulge me for a moment, Trump spent decades before running for office lying about his wealth, his success, etc, etc, etc, and they served a simple purpose beyond ego-stroking or fucking over investors. A lot of his financial success hinged on licensing his name to other properties and businesses. Trump hotels, Trump apartments, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, etc. His biggest success was, ironically, selling on the idea of success, and it shows. He literally slapped his name on buildings, got spots on TV and movies, even let himself get roasted for publicity, (where reportedly one of the very few 'off-limit' topics was saying he didn't have as much money as he said he did,) all to keep his name circulating in the public consciousness. Trump became a much bigger success as a marketing brand than anything else.

Trump running for office is much the same; it wasn't just about saying how awesome and smart and successful he was as he lied his ass off. Those lies served a purpose. They were intended to create a strong emotional investment in those who would see Trump as their one, best chance of having their issues addressed, whether it was inadequate health care, toppling ISIS or restoring the coal industry. Ironically, Trump's efforts to inflate his reputation as a businessman would serve him well in this regard, as the name 'Trump' was indeed often associated with success and great acumen specifically because he marketed himself that way.

By insisting that not only was he going to fix everything, but that he would do it 'so easily,' the mindset for many likely became 'Only Trump Can Save Us,' and that level of absolute conviction is nigh impossible to dissuade, even when evidence contradicting it is staring one right in the face.

This is half illustration, half fun historical tidbit, but I refer you to a book from 1956 titled 'When Prophecy Fails,' which was a bit of an undercover report on a small cult that believed 1) God was going to end the world on a specific date, and 2) he would also send a spaceship shortly before doomsday to rescue the Cultists and bring them to paradise. Suffice to say, it did not, and He did not, with the cult leader insisting their group's prayers had 'saved the world,' and yet despite the Doomsday cult literally not having their Doomsday, those who'd already formed strong emotional investment in the idea- such as quitting their jobs or other 'the world is totally ending tomorrow' shit you can't take back easily- believed even MORE strongly in the cult. I'd really recommend looking into this, it's quite a fascinating bit of social science history, ranking right up there with the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. :3

Which circles me back to what I'd said in the earlier post. To phrase it as plainly as I can; I've no doubt that plenty of people are skeptical, healthily so, of media reports. But when it comes to people instinctively siding with Trump on a given issue- any given issue, really- I do sincerely believe the vast, vast majority would be siding with Trump regardless of the media's behavior.

Ultimately (in my opinion, of course,) their support of Trump isn't due to a rejection of the media's actual failings- though they will raise them as justification- but are rather a rejection of the media because they're emotionally invested in Trump being 'on their side.' =P Take away shitty media behavior, and they'd still be Team Trump, they'd just have to find or fabricate a new excuse. Similarly, Trump's use of the term isn't due to, again, the media's actual failings, it's fulfilling a very specific purpose; keeping the followers who feel they need Trump firmly on his side.

This is all well and good, but still remains pretty irrelevant to my point or arguments. I specified early on and repeated a few times that I was not referring to the core supporters or opposer of trump because of exactly the mentality you describe: they would not change their minds regardless of evidence. Mine related to the middle-ground folks and those who's positions could be swayed. The portion of the population that voted obama for one or both his elections and then trump for the last one because of how they were willing to not vote based on party line.

About the only aspect relating to that point was your claim that it is the majority of supporters that fall into this category of unfaltering support or opposition. I disagree the amount of those is as many as you seem to believe.

At worst I'd suggest that the media's reputation might push people into the middle ground of not outright believing reports sight unseen, but honestly I don't see that as a bad thing. As Internet access has only continued to spread and expand, misinformation and fabrications are only going to go on the rise, both from literal 'Fake News' sites, (there's a topic I could go on, and on, and ON about, lemme tell ya,) to mainstream outlets trying to come up with something 'edgy' enough to snag clicks, to individual reporters who lie to everyone including their own employer just to try and stand out on a sensational headline. Heck, in another thread I think someone mentioned an organization tried to 'trick' one of the newspaper outlets into printing 'fake news' by sending them a false witness, I can only imagine such 'gotcha' efforts are only going to increase over time as organizations become more and more determined to help Trump's Fake News narrative.

If people are being taught to be skeptical of the media, (and I mean the WHOLE media, which on the Internet is a fucking vast entity, dear God,) I'd call that a positive... so long as that skepticism is constructive and reasonable, which in the case of most Trump supporters it's not. =P I could go into some examples on the sorta stuff I try to look out for when parsing media reports, but this post is probably going on long enough. @[email protected]

The media's reputation as untrustworthy is earned by their actions and decisions. Every instance you mentioned, be it reporters faking stories, people tricking them, or the push to click-bait are still their failures alone. No one made them publish anything, and their decision to not verify, not investigate at all, or to promote the fake news for clicks is still ENTIRELY on them.

The problem with this being a good thing because it promotes skepticism though is that it only does to the people more skeptical in the first place. To most other people, it results in a psychological shortcut where distrust in one source lends credence to the opponent of that source. The idea of an enemy of my enemy is my friend. So when trump is calling them fake, and the only experience of trump being a liar is from the news outright revealed to be liars, the distrust of the media's betrayal (and it is betrayal for the news media to be dishonest or outright lie) results in some trusting the claims of the now vindicated individual who called them out. That trust in him calling the media out due to the accuracy of that claim can also lead to trust in the person in general. Most people don't see it as a wake up call to be more skeptical in general, rather, it is seen as "they lied, they betrayed me, they are trying to manipulate me, they are my enemy now". People trusted the media to tell them the truth, be accurate, and provide them with relevant and useful info. The media turning into propaganda and being revealed as liars destroys the expectation in the media to be trustworthy. Frustration, anger, betrayal and spite all would be responses to it, and all would feed into giving trump an ear where they might not have before.

TL;DR: Again, I don't think we necessarily disagree with regards to the broad strokes, I think our disagreement seems to be just how much the media's actual actions impact the support Trump is receiving. I just don't think that we'd really be in that different a place if the media was either a) more honest, or b) just better at avoiding getting caught. At best Trump would just be saying 'THEY'RE TELLING LIES, TRUST ME!" and his supporters would be saying "YEAH THEY'RE TELLING LIES, TRUST HIM!!"

I would say the scope of the impact is certainly where our disagreement lay as well. But I think you dismiss the impact the media's betrayal of public trust has been utilized by trump and how much it hurts the media. Yeah, you will always have a core who support trump, same as one that will always oppose him, so my assessment obviously doesn't apply to those fixed positions. But just look back at the election even. People who voted, gladly, for obama switched to vote for trump. Entire states flipped that used to be dependably blue. Voter response to scandals like the media sharing questions with hillary in the debate, or their aiding the screw-over of bernie made them distrust the media during the elections, and consequently sympathize with their fellow media punching bag Trump. Since then the media ramped up their campaign against him, utilizing fake news, and have been hit, repeatedly, with call outs and scandals. Hell, CNN publicly threatened doxing to blackmail a guy who made a wrestling gif with the CNN logo solely because trump retweeted it, causing a lot of people to hate CNN more, and thus be more susceptible to trump's messages, because part of it is calling CNN fake news.

runic knight:This is special. See, I ask, many times even, for people to explain their reasoning.

And they do - at least at first. And their reasoning is nearly always adequate to good.

But this is what I mean about obstinacy and your assumption of your own infallibility. You simply don't see their reason or give it sufficient credit. Or you explain something badly and malign your opponent for your miscommunication. Frequently it is actually you that clearly misunderstands or misrepresents arguments, and when it is pointed out, you just insist you were right.

They stop explaining themselves when they realise that all it gets them is bad refutations, boasting and abuse. You know what? It is up to you to deserve a good response. And when I say that, length does matter here.

Those of us who do professional writing are all aware of the importance of conciseness - getting things across effectively but efficiently assists comprehension and ease of reading. A massive, loosely coherent splurge of tl;dr detracts from your ability to effectively communicate. And there again, that's on you.

runic knight:The portion of the population that voted obama for one or both his elections and then trump for the last one because of how they were willing to not vote based on party line.

Well, seeing that the difference of Obama voters (65,915,795) and Clinton voters (65,853,652) is negligible (about 60,000), and the difference between Romney voters (60,933,504) and Trump voters (62,985,134) isn't that minor (2 million); we can assume the amount of people who jumped the Clinton ship to Trump's is even minor. Would those 60,000 made a difference against the 2 million?

I think you are forgetting there are many sides on this. What do I mean? Let's compare with the first of Obama's elections. Obama had 69,498,516 voters (making a difference of 3.6 million with Clinton), and McCain had 59,948,323 (making a difference of 2 million with Trump). There are 1.5 million unaccounted voters. They went to the 3rd party candidates.

Still, Clinton got 65m votes and Trump 62m votes, and yet she lost. Realistically, how many votes would the Democrats had needed to get in order to win? (because 3 million more than the Republicans didn't seem to cut it). Lying media or not, it seems the public's vote doesn't count in the U.S. Electoral System. Just saying.